Figure 1

Isolation of viable human CD24⁺ (notochordal) cells and CD24⁻ (sclerotomal) cells from fetal human spines. (A) CD24 immunostaining of an 8 WPC human fetal spine showing notochord-specific staining. (B) FACS plot of the 12 WPC specimen used in the microarray analysis showing CD24-PE positivity against side scatter-height (SSC-H). P4 represents viable CD24⁺ events and P5 represents viable CD24⁻ events. (C) Proportion of viable CD24⁺ and CD24⁻ events sorted from each sample and predicted sex (based on transcriptome analysis) of each sample. (D) Relative gene expression of CD24, T, CDH2, Noggin, KRT8, KRT18 and KRT19 in CD24⁺ and CD24⁻ cells used in microarray analyses (N = 5). Gene expression was normalised to the reference gene GAPDH and then CD24⁺ cell expression was plotted relative to the expression in CD24⁻ cells and presented on a log scale. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean of the samples analysed. * represents p < 0.05.