Figure 8 of Wang, Mol Vis 2010; 16:2850-2866.


Figure 8. Effect of the glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) on gene expression profile of retinal progenitor cell (RPCs) evaluated by qPCR. After 5 days of culturing in either the epidermal growth factor (EGF) alone or in EGF+GDNF conditions, the expression of the selected progenitor through retinal and apoptosis markers was evaluated by quantitative reverse-transcription PCR. For each gene, expression levels in the EGF-alone condition (black) were set to 1.0, and the relative expression in the EGF+GDNF condition (gray) was expressed proportionately. Expression levels of the progenitor markers Nestin, Sox2, Ki-67, Chx10, C-myc, and Vimentin were sustained with the addition of GDNF, suggesting that the progenitor phenotype is not negated by exposure to this cytokine. Similarly, expression levels of the precursor and lineage-related markers CRALBP, PKC-α, βIII-Tubulin, MAP2, DCX, and Recoverin were not significantly affected by the addition of GDNF to EGF-based proliferation medium. However, there were small but statistically significant increases in the expression of Vimentin (1.20 fold), Mash 1 (1.12 fold), Ki-67 (1.07 fold), and Hes5 (1.03 fold) versus the same gene under EGF-alone conditions (*p<0.05). The x-axis shows different genes; the y-axis shows ratios of mRNA expression levels for the treatment groups.