Fig. 1

SCBD-produced nanostructured zirconia induces neuronal differentiation in PC12 cells. a The phase contrast images demonstrate the biological responses of neuron-like PC12 cells after 24 h interaction with the different surfaces presented in Fig. 2 in the absence or presence of nerve growth factor (NGF). White arrows indicated typical examples of neurite outgrowth of differentiated PC12 cells (in Additional file 1: Figure S1, a close up image of representative differentiated cells on ns-Zr15 is shown to illustrate more detailed the features of differentiated PC12 cells). b On the right the corresponding statistical quantification of the differentiation rate (top) and neurite outgrowth (bottom) is shown. A cell that developed at least one neurite with a length >10 μm was counted as differentiated, the quantification of neurite outgrowth are detailed in the “Methods” section. The bars represent the change of differentiation and neurite outgrowth compared to the PLL condition in the absence of NGF. The bars represent the average and are shown with the SD, representing the global statistics of five independent experiments (n: >500 cells, >150 neurites)