Fig. 5: Proliferation of the vertebral growth plate chondrocytes.

a An anti-Ki67 antibody was used to label proliferating chondrocytes (red fluorescence) and DAPI was used to label the nuclei (blue fluorescence) of the vertebral growth plate chondrocytes. All experiments were repeated three times with consistent results, and representative images are shown. b Positive rate of Ki67-labeled nuclei in the images shown in (a) was quantified. Scale bars, 25 μm. In (b), *means P < 0.05 compared with the female group, by the chi-square test (χ2 test). HZ represents the hypertrophic zone, and PZ represents the proliferative zone