Figure 6. Apical periodontitis (AP) stimulates mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) differentiation toward osteoblast lineage cells.

(A) Pseudotime analysis of the MSC population. (B) Reconstructed cell differentiation trajectory of MSC populations in control and AP groups. (C) Heatmap of differential genes of three states. (D) Bar plot of numerical changes between AP and control in respective states as identified in pseudotime analysis. Fisher’s exact test with Bonferroni correction was used. ****p<0.0001. All data were exhibited as mean ± SEM. (E) Comparison between the pseudotime gene trajectories of MSC subpopulations showed upregulation of Sparc, Col1a1, Col1a2, and Bglap. Black line indicates AP, and dotted lines indicate control.