Fig. 1

Study design and primary culture of rat MSCs. a An overview of study design. b Rat MSCs at passage four and trilineage differentiation of MSCs into adipocytes, chondrocytes, and osteoblast cells. Differentiated adipocytes, chondrocytes, and osteocytes were stained with oil red O, Alcian Blue and Alizarin Red S solution respectively and images were viewed under an inverted light microscope at 10 × magnification; scale bar = 50 µm. c Representative figure of MSCs expressing vimentin and nestin. Co-expression of vimentin and nestin confirms the true expression of nestin and vimentin in rat MSCs (Merged). Images were viewed under the confocal microscope at 10× magnification, scale bar = 100 µm