Different doses of bone morphogenetic protein 4 promote the expression of early germ cell-specific gene in bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells

Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-4 has a crucial role on primordial germ cells (PGCs) development in vivo which can promote stem cell differentiation to PG-like cells. In this study, we investigated the expression of Mvh as one of the specific genes in primordial germ cells after treatment with different doses of BMP4 on bone mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs)-derived PGCs. Following isolation of BMSCs from male mouse femur and tibia, cells were cultured in medium for 72 h. Passage 4 murine BMSCs were characterized by CD90, CD105, CD34, and CD45 markers and osteo-adipogenic differentiation. Different doses of BMP4 (0, 0.01, 0.1, 1, 5, 25, 50, and 100 ng/ml) were added to BMSCs for PGCs differentiation during 4-days culture. Viability percent, proliferation rates, and expression of Mvh gene were analyzed by RT-qPCR. Data analysis was done with ANOVA test. CD90+, CD105+, CD34−, and CD45− BMSCs were able to differentiate to osteo-adipogenic lineages. The results revealed that proliferation rate and viability percent were raised significantly (p ≤ 0.05) by adding 1, 5, 25 ng/ml of BMP4 and there were decreased to the lowest rate after adding 100 ng/ml BMP4 (p ≤ 0.05). There were significant up regulation (p ≤ 0.05) in Mvh expression between 25, 50, and 100 ng/ml BMP4 with other doses. So the selective dose of BMP-4 for treatment during 4-day culture was 25 ng/ml. The results suggest that addition of 25 ng/ml BMP4 had the best effects based on gene-specific marker expression.