Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jul;415(17):3305-3312.
doi: 10.1007/s00216-023-04746-z. Epub 2023 May 16.

Hydrogel microenvironment contributes to chemical-induced differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells: single-cell infrared microspectroscopy characterization

Jiang Qian #  1   2   3 , Yadi Wang #  3   4 , Xueling Li  5 , Junhong Lü  6   7   8   9
Affiliations

Hydrogel microenvironment contributes to chemical-induced differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells: single-cell infrared microspectroscopy characterization

Jiang Qian et al. Anal Bioanal Chem. 2023 Jul.

Abstract

Stem cell microenvironment plays vital roles in directing cell proliferation and differentiation. Due to the tiny biochemical changes in the early stage of stem cell development, technical challenges to characterize the potential effects of environmental signals remain. In this work, we have introduced synchrotron radiation-based Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy to evaluate the synergistic effects of physical and chemical factors on stem cell differentiation at the single-cell level. By using principal component analysis and cell-cell Euclidean distance calculation, the phenotypic heterogeneity changes during stem cell osteogenesis induced by lithium chloride or Wnt5a protein loaded in the polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogel were characterized in detail. The results demonstrated that PVA hydrogel could lead to the distinct effects between low-concentration lithium and wnt5a on human mesenchymal stem cells, suggesting a vital role of niche signals in Wnt pathway. These findings highlight the importance of microenvironment to the chemical-induced effects on stem cell differentiation and also provide a label-free, noninvasive method to sensitively identify the niche function in stem cell biology.

Keywords: Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy; Hydrogel microenvironment; Mesenchymal stem cells; Osteogenic differentiation; Wnt signaling.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Jones DL, Wagers AJ. No place like home: anatomy and function of the stem cell niche. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. 2008;9(1):11. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm2319 . - DOI - PubMed
    1. Abdul-Al M, Kyeremeh GK, Saeinasab M, et al. Stem cell niche microenvironment: review. Bioengineering (Basel). 2021;8(8):108. https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering8080108 . - DOI - PubMed
    1. Pennings S, Liu KJ, Qian H. The stem cell niche: interactions between stem cells and their environment. Stem Cells Int. 2018;2018:4879379. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/4879379 . - DOI - PubMed - PMC
    1. Correa S, Grosskopf AK, Lopez Hernandez H, et al. Translational applications of hydrogels. Chem Rev. 2021;121(18):11385. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemrev.0c01177 . - DOI - PubMed - PMC
    1. Li S, Cui Y, Liu H, et al. Application of bioactive metal ions in the treatment of bone defects. J Mater Chem B. 2022;10(45):9369. https://doi.org/10.1039/d2tb01684b . - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources