Mouse breeding
The animal work was carried out according to federal guidelines, with the approval by the Animal Ethical and Welfare Committee of Sun Yat-sen University (approval number SYSU-IACUC-2021-000101). Mice were purchased from the Jackson Laboratory (Prx1-Cre, stock no.005584 [11]; Stat3f/f, stock no.016923 [13]). To generate mice with Stat3 conditional knockout in limb bud and craniofacial mesenchyme, Stat3f/f were crossed with the Prx1-Cre mice to generate Prx1-Cre; Stat3f/+ mice. Next, Prx1-Cre; Stat3f/+ mice were crossed with Stat3f/f mice to generate Prx1-Cre; Stat3f/f conditional knockout (CKO) mutant mice. The Cre-negative littermates were taken as the control of Stat3 CKO mutants. Mouse tail genotyping was performed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the primer sequences for PCR were listed in Table 1.
Whole-mount-skeletal staining
Skeletons from neonatal (P0) mice were processed for Alizarin Red S (sigma A5533) and Alcian Blue (sigma A5268) staining to demonstrate bone and cartilage. The protocol was same as previously described [14]. Pictures were taken by Leica Microsystems (MZ10F).
Histology and immunohistochemical (IHC) staining
For histology, limbs were fixed in 10% formalin (Servicebio, Wuhan, China) for 24h. For 8-week-old samples, 4-weeks’ decalcification by 10% tetrasodium EDTA were conducted. After dehydrated by graded ethanol and cleared in xylene, limbs were embedded in paraffin and sectioned at 4μm thickness along the long axis. Sections were stained with safranin O/fast green, masson, hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) (Servicebio, Wuhan, China). For immunohistochemical staining, the antigen retrieval was performed in a citrate buffer (Beyotime, Shanghai, China). Endogenous peroxidase activities were quenched with 3% H2O2 for 10 minutes. Sections were blocked in normal goat serum (NGS) for 1 hour before incubation with primary antibodies overnight at 4°C. The next day, sections were incubated with biotinylated secondary antibody (Servicebio, Wuhan, China) for 1 hour at room temperature. Then, sections were incubated with diaminobenzidine and counterstained with hematoxylin. Phosphate buffer saline (PBS), instead of primary antibody, was used as the negative control. All sections were mounted in neutral resins and then scanned by AperioAT2 scanner (Leica Microsystems).
Micro-CT analysis
The skeletons were scanned and analyzed using a μCT 50 system (Scanco, Brüttisellen, Switzerland) with a spatial resolution of 10 μm. For trabecular bone morphometric analysis of distal femur, the starting slice was taken where the growth plates were fully merged and extended for 100 slices proximally. The morphometric analysis was performed for bone mineral density (BMD) and bone volume per tissue volume (BV/TV; %) by μCT 50 system. The 3D reconstruction of the skeletons and cross-section images were performed by Dataviewer and CTvox (Skyscan, Belgium).
Primary isolation and characterization of BMSCs
The femur and tibia were dissected from 8-week-old Stat3 CKO mutants and littermate controls. Bone marrow cells from long bones were flushed out by 2% fetal bovine serum (FBS, Gibco, USA) PBS. Single-cell suspensions from long bone marrow were obtained through 70-μm cell mesh and seeded on 100-mm dishes (Jet, Guangzhou, China). Non-adherent cells were removed after 3-days’ culture in alpha-MEM (Gibco, USA) supplemented with 20% FBS (Gibco, USA), 100 U·mL−1 penicillin, and 100 μg·mL−1 streptomycin (Gibco, USA), 2 mmol·L−1 l-glutamine (Gibco, USA), 55 μmol·L−1 2-mercaptoethanol (Invitrogen, USA). Cells at passage 2 were employed for the following in vitro experiments.
The mesenchymal stem cell characterization was performed, including (a) the flow cytometry were conducted to show that these cells were positive for CD29, CD44 and were negative for CD34 and CD45 (BD Biosciences, USA), (b) osteoblastic and (c) adipogenic differentiation were applied to show the multi-lineage differentiation capacity of the primary isolated cells. The antibodies used for flow cytometry were listed in Table 2.
Osteogenic and adipogenic differentiation of BMSCs
For osteogenic differentiation, the BMSCs were plated in 6-well plates and cultured in osteogenic induction medium containing 10 mM β-glycerol phosphate (Sigma, USA), and 50 μM ascorbic acid (Solarbio, Beijing, China) 10−7 M dexamethasone (Sigma, USA). After 7 days’ induction, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) expressions were detected by Alkaline Phosphatase Stain kit (Yeasen, Shanghai, China) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Images were taken by Leica Microsystems and ImageJ was applied to quantify the stained areas. After 14-days’ osteogenic induction, the calcium deposit was evaluated by Alizarin Red S staining (Cyagen Biosciences, Guangzhou, China). Images were taken by Leica Microsystems, followed by quantification using 10% cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) (Sigma, USA) to dissolve the stained calcium deposit. The absorbance value of the dissolved solution at 562 nm was measured by microplate spectrophotometer (Bio-Tek, UK).
Adipogenic induction medium was provided by Cyagen Biosciences, Inc. (Guangzhou, China). After 12-days’ induction according to manufacture instruction, the cultured cells were stained with oil red O solution (Cyagen, Guangzhou, China), and were observed under light microscope (Leica Microsystems).
Western blot
Total protein of mouse hindlimbs and BMSCs was extracted using the RIPA lysis buffer (CWBIOTECH, China) containing proteinase and phosphatase inhibitors (CWBIOTECH, China), and then quantified by the BCA method (FudeBio, China). The proteins were separated by SDS-PAGE gel electrophoresis (Smart-Lifesciences, China) and transferred to a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane (Millipore, USA). After 1h blocking by 5% BSA, membranes were incubated at 4°C overnight with relevant primary antibodies. The PVDF membranes were incubated in HRP conjugated secondary antibody for 1 h at room temperature. Immunoreactivities were detected by a chemiluminescence kit (FudeBio, China). Data were normalized to GAPDH and quantified by ImageJ. The antibodies used in this study were listed in Table 2.
Statistical analysis
The data were presented as means ± standard deviation (SD). Student's t-tests were used to compare the difference between Stat3 CKO and the control. The GraphPad Prism 7.0 software were applied for statistical analysis. The significance level was set at P < 0.05.