Figure 1

Isolation and generation of the immortalized human airway basal cell line BCi-NS1. A. Morphology of the parental primary basal cells at passage 1. B. Morphology of the primary basal cells following senescence at passage 5 of culture. C. Morphology of immortalized basal cells (BCi-NS1) following passage 13 of culture. D. Telomerase activity of immortalized basal cells (TRAP assay). Lane 1 – Parental primary basal cells; lane 2 – immortalized basal cells BCi-NS1; lane 3 – positive control (Pos; telomerase positive HeLa cell extract); lane 4 – negative control (Neg; heat-inactivated telomerase positive HeLa cell extract). E. Characterization of immortalized basal cells by Western analysis of cell type specific markers. Lane 1 – Primary basal cells; lane 2 – BCi-NS1 immortalized basal cells; and lane 3 – bronchial brushing. For all cells, shown is the expression of basal cells markers (KRT5, TP63), secretory cell marker (MUC5AC), Clara cell marker (CC10) and ciliated cell marker (DNAI1). GAPDH was used as a loading control.