Probing Human Osteogenic Differentiation Using Double-Stranded Locked Nucleic Acid Biosensors

Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) have great potential for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine due to their self-renewal and multi-differentiation properties. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern osteogenic differentiation are poorly understood due to a lack of effective tools to detect gene expression at single cell level. Here, we present a double-stranded locked nucleic acid biosensor to investigate gene expression analysis during hMSCs osteogenic differentiation. We first demonstrated this biosensor for gene expression analysis in single hMSCs. We next investigated the regulatory role of Notchl-D1l4 signaling in osteogenic differentiation. Our findings provide evidence that Notchl-D1l4 signaling is involved in hMSCs osteogenic differentiation. Inhibition of Notchl-D1l4 signaling significantly decreased osteogenic differentiation and D1l4 expression.