Fig. 3

Western blot analysis of the protein expression levels in differentiation cultures of the pluripotency marker OCT4 and the gap junction protein CX43. a Representative blots depicting the expression levels of OCT4 and CX43 with HSC70 used as a loading control in ovary (Ov), undifferentiated stem cells (Un), untreated control differentiations (c), and RA treated differentiations (RA). b While there was no significant difference in the expression of OCT4 between the control (Con Diff) and RA exposed differentiations (RA), the expression of OCT4 in the RA treated group was found to be significantly higher than in the undifferentiated control group (Undiff). c The expression of CX43 was found to be significantly higher in the RA treated differentiation when compared to the vehicle only control differentiations. In both cases the expression level of CX43 was found to be not significantly different from adult mouse ovary (Ov) controls. The data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post-hoc test (Data represent at least n = 3 biological replicates)