Identification of the transcription factor KLF9 as a key gene during BM-MSCs adipogenic differentiation

Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) are multipotent stem cells with the capacity for self-renewal and differentiating into multiple cell types. However, the underlying regulatory mechanism has not been fully clarified. Krüppel-like factors 9 (KLF9), a potential key transcription factor relevant to numerous physiological processes, has been detected during BM-MSCs adipogenic differentiation by bioinformatics (integrated) analyses from four different adipogenic differentiation datasets. Our results indicated that the KLF9 could regulate the adipogenic differentiation of MSCs and the capacity of adipogenic differentiation in BM-MSCs was sharply down-regulated after KLF9 knockdown. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that KLF9 plays an important role in the process of BM-MSCs differentiation and may open up new avenues for the control of adipogenesis to combat obesity and its related diseases.