chapter 8 Colony Culture of Neural Cells as a Method for the Study of Cell Lineages in the Developing Cns: The Astrocyte Cell Lineage

Publisher This chapter focuses on colony culture method for the study of cell lineages in the developing CNS. The colony culture method can assay only proliferative cells that can attach to the plastic surface of culture dishes and form colonies. Ventricular cells, although proliferative because of their apparent interdependence, can grow only as a monolayer out of the fragment on top of the collagen and not as single dissociated cells on the plastic surfaces. Cells are not able to form colonies in cultures, it seems, until a certain degree of cell independence is reached. To determine when colony forming cells begin to appear in the CNS, the chapter examines dissociated cells from the neural tube-spinal cord primordium of chick embryos at various developmental stages. Colonies formed in cultures by the dissociated cells of neopallium or spinal cord are not all identical. They vary in the morphology of their cells and in their size and compactness. Cells of dissociated neopallium from newborn mice form six distinct colony types in cultures. Origin of type-A colonies has been described. Type-A colonies in cultures are composed of epithelial cells and occur in high frequency in cultures from younger embryos. Type-A colonies form type-C colonies in culture and, in time, these form type-B colonies. It occurs in high frequency in cultures before colonies of type C or B do.