The Effect of Differentiation Induction on FAK and Src Activity in Live HMSCs Visualized by FRET

FAK and Src signaling play important roles in cell differentiation, survival and migration. However, it remains unclear how FAK and Src activities are regulated at the initial stage of stem cell differentiation. We utilized fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based FAK and Src biosensors to visualize these kinase activities at the plasma membrane of human mesenchymal stem cells (HMSCs) under the stimulation of osteogenic, myoblastic, or neural induction reagents. Our results indicate that the membrane FAK and Src activities are distinctively regulated by these differentiation induction reagents. FAK and Src activities were both up-regulated with positive feedback upon osteogenic induction, while myoblastic induction only activated Src, but not FAK. Neural induction, however, transiently activated FAK and subsequently Src, which triggered a negative feedback to partially inhibit FAK activity. These results unravel distinct regulation mechanisms of FAK and Src activities during HMSC fate decision, which should advance our understanding of stem cell differentiation in tissue engineering.