Physiological and morphological studies on developing sympathetic neurons in dissociated cell culture.

Abstract

During the past several years, coordinated studies have been made in this laboratory of the physiology, biochemistry and anatomy of isolated sympathetic principal neurons developing in cell culture (Bray 1970, 1973; Mains and Patterson 1973a,b,c; Claude 1973; Bunge 1973; Obata 1974; O'Lague et al. 1974; Patterson and Chun 1974; Nurse and O'Lague 1975; Patterson et al., this volume). The neurons are dissociated from the superior cervical ganglia of newborn rats and grown in quasi-monolayer cultures, either alone or in the presence of nonneuronal cells. Although grown for days or weeks in fluid and cellular environments rather different from those in vivo, the neurons in culture are similar to their counterparts in intact animals with respect to their resting and action potentials, their high sensitivity to acetylcholine, their general fine structure, the differentiation of catecholamine synthesis, and the uptake, degradation, storage and release of norepinephrine. Unexpectedly, however, a large fraction of...