Figure 1.Retinoic acid induces differentiation of embryonic H9c2 myoblasts to cardiomyocytes in low serum supplemented with retinoic acid. Rat embryonic heart-derived myoblasts maintained in DMEM containing 10% FBS (A) were cultured in DMEM containing 1% FBS for seven days resulting in differentiation to skeletal muscle (B). A seven day culture in low serum media supplemented with 10 nM retinoic acid resulted in differentiation into cardiac myocytes (C). RT-PCR quantitation of MLC-2v transcripts (which display absolute cardiac tissue specificity) indicates overexpression of the gene in retinoic acid treated cells compared to cells cultured in low serum without retinoic acid (mean ± standard deviations of triplicates from a representative experiment, total of three independent experiments, (D). Bar = 5 μm; x 20 magnification.
