Some observations of the morphology of the glial and neuronal cell populations in monolayer culture

Abstract

Attempts have been made in the past to separate the glial and neuronal populations of cells for various studies. The homogeneity of cell populations achieved using these methods remains to be improved. Using a modified separation method and combined with subculturing, very pure glialand neuronal populations have been obtained. This paper reports the surface features and some properties of the two cell populations using the modified culture method.Ten day old chick embryo cerebra were removed aseptically and the meninges carefully excised. The tissues were washed in calcium and magnesium free (CMF) tyrode solution before incubation for 35 min. at 37°C in 0. 2% of trypsin in CMF. The cells were dissociated in E-II medium by gentle flushing of the tissues with a fine bore pipette for about 20 times. To each of the 35 mm culture dishes containing 2 ml of E-II medium and a poly-L-lysine coated coverslip, one ml of cerebral cell suspension was added and the cells were allowed to plate on a coverslip for 7 minutes at room temperature.