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Bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) are an irresistible choice for use in stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine. BMSCs osteoblastic differentiation is also important in bone development, diseases, malignancies, and cancers studies. Wnt signaling pathway antagonists, Dickkopf-1 (Dkk 1), Secreted Frizzled-Related Proteins (sFRPs), and Wnt Inhibitory Factor 1 (Wif1) play important roles in inducing osteoblastic differentiation. This study is the first to investigate the association between DNA methylation and gene expression of Dkk1, sFRP2, sFRP4, and Wif1during BMSCs osteoblastic differentiation.

We analysed morphological variation among 17 forewing characters within five populations of the paper wasp, Polistes dominulus, in Iran. The raw planar coordinate data were aligned using geometric and mathematical calculations in Kendall's shape space. After transfer of the data to a linear Euclidean space, i.e., tangent space, multi-variate analysis of 135 images of forewings were made using their geometric morphometric characters (30 in the forewings). We observed a direct correlation between morphological characters and the geographically easiest travel distance along river valleys and mountain ranges.