Culturing Adult Neural Stem Cells: Application to the Study of Neurodegenerative and Neuropsychiatric Pathology

摘要: Stem cells exist in many, perhaps all, adult tissues and serve the common function of a reservoir precursors that can mediate cell turnover or repair damage. Among tissue-specific stem populations, neural are particularly amenable to study because they readily isolated cultured simple culture systems allow demonstration cell-autonomous self-renewal multipotentiality. Here, we describe most widely employed system, neurosphere assay, used reveal these cardinal properties which respond specific growth factors proliferate serum-free media form clonal sphere colonies. Although several pitfalls limitations exist, assay provide detailed information about kinetics behavior when utilized under appropriate conditions. Further, together with histochemical analysis using nucleotide analog labeling may be applied estimate number cellular brain physiological pathological