Protocols for Neural Cell Culture

This volume is designed to be kept close at hand as a ready reference and a guide to laboratory procedures. It is based on tissue culture manuals used for a number of years at international courses on tissue culture at the University of Saskatchewan, made possible by the generous support of the Canadian Council of Animal Care and the Medical Research Council of Canada. Sergey Fedoroff Arleen Richardson The second edition of Protocols for Neural Cell Culture adheres to the prin­ ciples enunciated in the first edition, but the content has been extensively revised and expanded. Two new chapters have been added to reflect the increased interest in the development and differentiation of the nervous system and in the reconstruction of its circuitry in tissue culture. One chapter deals with slice cul­ tures in which the organization of the nervous system is preserved. When slice cultures are combined with explant cultures, afferent and efferent projections can be reconstructed. The other chapter deals with aggregating neural cell cul­ tures, in which "minibrains" can form. Theses are small, uniformly sized spheres of nervous tissue, usually having nerve cells in the center and astrocytes, oligo­ dendrocytes, and microglia in the periphery. Such cultures can be used to study neutral cell interactions in an organized milieu and for qualitative as well as quantitative studies at biochemical and molecular levels.