In vitro differentiation of rat multipotent adult porgenitor cells to smooth muscle like cells

The aim of the study was to characterize the molecular mechanism involved in TGF-ß mediated smooth muscle formation in vitro. We employed rat bone marrow derived Oct4 expressing clones of multipotent adult progenitor cells (rMAPC). We subjected these cells to differentiation towards smooth muscle cell as previously reported using TGF-ß1. The differentiation process reuires 6 days with media change every 2 days followed by RNA harvest. RNA was isolated using commercially available kits (Qiagen RNA easy micro kit). RNA integrity and quality was assessed prior to labeling and hybridization. As a control RNA from rat aortic smooth muscle cells was commercially obtained.