Friday, November 15, 2013

Fluorescent activated cell sorting (FACS): a rapid and reliable method to estimate the number of neurons in a mixed population

Sole`ne Sergent-Tanguy, Carine Chagneau, Isabelle Neveu, Philippe Naveilhan
 2003 Oct 15;129(1):73-9.


Central nervous system consists of a mixed population of cells such as neurons, astrocytes and microglia. Immunolabelling was the only way to characterize them until the authors from this study employed flow cytometry to ascertain the proportion of different types of cells in primary cultures. Specific antibodies were used against intracellular markers such as Tuj-1 and GFAP to differentiate between neurons and astrocytes using flow cytometry. An important advantage of flow cytometry is that it can be used for quantitative studies of heterogeneous cultures. This technique will be particularly useful for our lab since we can retrogradely label the spinally projecting C1 neurons using a tracer such as CtB and collect these cells specifically using flow cytometry and perform future studies. Also it will be interesting to know how different types of cells are populated within the rostrocaudal extent of the RVLM.

-Madhan

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