Murine mesenchymal stem cells undergo molecular changes after a single passage in culture

The properties of MSCs can be affected by long term culture, therefore casting doubt over the ability of late passage MSCs to accurately recapitulate their biology. Additionally, assumption within the scientific community is often made that early passage MSCs are still representative of the primary MSC population, however, little research has been done to support this. We compared the transcriptomic profiles of murine MSCs freshly isolated from the long bones to MSCs that had been expanded in culture for 10 days. Interestingly, we identified that a single passage in culture induced extensive alterations to MSC molecular signatures associated with cell cycling, differentiation and immune response. Comparative differential gene expression profiling analysis of RNA-seq data for 1) murine long bone MSCs freshly isolated from 10-week old female C57BL/6J mice (primary MSCs or pMSCs), versus 2) murine long bone MSCs from 10-week old female C57BL/6J mice that had been cultured for a single passage (cultured MSCs or cMSCs).