Glial Cell Diversification in the Rat Optic Nerve

Abstract

A central challenge in developmental neurobiology is to understand how an apparently homogeneous population of neuroepithelial cells in the early mammalian embryo gives rise to the great diversity of nerve cells (neurons) and supporting cells (glial cells) in the mature central nervous system. Because the optic nerve is one of the several types of glial cells but no intrinsic neurons, it is an attractive place to investigate how neuroepithelial cells diversify. Studies of developing rat optic nerve cells in culture suggest that both cell-cell interactions and intrinsic cellular programs play important parts in glial cell diversification.

Dedifferentiation of Adult Human Myoblasts Induced by Ciliary Neurotrophic Factor In Vitro

“…When induced to differentiate into glial lineage by treatment with DM2 (see Materials and Methods) for 10 -14 d, ϳ8 -12% of MBPCs produced cells expressing glial markers (Raff et al, 1989) These results clearly demonstrate the evidence that MBPCs are multipotent progenitor cells that can differentiate into more than one lineage cells in vitro when cultured in different differentiation medium, whereas myoblasts show no signs of multipotency under the same conditions. Thus, CNTF induces dedifferentiation of skeletal myoblasts rather than transdifferentiation to neural, glial, smooth muscle, and adipose lineages in vitro.…”

“…Pluripotent differentiation was confirmed using the specific markers of anti-Nestin, anti-NF160, anti-TH, anti-NSE, anti-chAT, anti-CNPase, anti-GFAP, anti-SMA, and anti-Myosin antibodies or Oil Red O stain (Raff, et al, 1989) for immunocytochemical or cytochemical assays. Before staining of Oil Red O, the cells were fixed for 10 min at RT in 4% formaldehyde and washed with 70% ethanol.…”

“…The cells were observed with a RADIANCE 2100 confocal microscope (Bio-Rad, Richmond, CA) using FITC and Texas Red filters. Specially, when exposed to anti-M-cadherin (sc-6470, 1:50; Santa Cruz Biotechnology) antibody, the cells were blocked with 5% normal rabbit serum (NRS) and incubated with the Alexa 488 -conjugated rabbit anti-goat IgG antibody (A11078, 1:1000; Molecular Probes).Pluripotent differentiation was confirmed using the specific markers of anti-Nestin, anti-NF160, anti-TH, anti-NSE, anti-chAT, anti-CNPase, anti-GFAP, anti-SMA, and anti-Myosin antibodies or Oil Red O stain (Raff, et al, 1989) for immunocytochemical or cytochemical assays. Before staining of Oil Red O, the cells were fixed for 10 min at RT in 4% formaldehyde and washed with 70% ethanol.…”

Differential modulation of TTX-sensitive and TTX-resistant Na+ channels in spinal cord astrocytes following activation of protein kinase C

“…As previously described for astrocytes cultured from hippocampus (Sontheimer et al, 1991), cerebellum (Dave et al, 1991;Wyllie et al, 1991), or optic nerve (Raff, 1989), spinal cord cultures contain two easily distinguishable types of astrocytes: flat, non-process-bearing pancake cells and process-bearing stel- Figure 1. Cultures of postnatal day 0 rat spinal cord contain up to five different morphological subtypes, of which two are easily distinguishable morphologically, and three others are highly variable.…”

Biology of the repair of central nervous system demyelinated lesions: an appraisal

“…26 and Raff 27 defined the neuroglia according to the expression of cellular antigens along their fetal development, using immunocytochemical methods. Astrocytes may be classified into two distinct classes: Type I (former protoplasmic), RAN-2* and Type II (former fibrous) A2B5\ Type II astrocytes assist interfascicular oligodendrocytes in the formation and maintenance of the myelin sheath and in saltatory conduction 27 . Interrelationships between Type II astrocytes and oligodendrocytes (GC*) come from a common embryonic origin, the 0-2A cell 27 .…”