Fig. 1

Tissue characterisation of annulus fibrosus and nucleus pulposus from human cervical intervertebral disc tissue. a Macroscopic separation of annulus fibrosus (AF) containing outer AF (oAF) and inner AF (iAF) from nucleus pulposus (NP) (dashed line). Histological staining for b tissue morphology using haematoxylin/eosin (HE) staining (lamellae indicated by arrows) and c, d glycosaminoglycan expression by alcian blue staining (blue) or safranin O staining (red). Exemplary shown for a 52-year-old female donor. Scale bar in a 1 cm and in b–d 1 mm