Factors influencing monolayer cell culture morphology and survival of cerebellar granule cells from wild-type and mutant mice.
A distinction must be made between genetic factors intrinsic and extrinsic to a specific degenerating cell type if neurological mutants that show such effects are to be used to assess cause-and-effect correlations of neural development. When the growth of granule cells from cerebella of staggerer mutant mice is investigated in monolayer cell cultures using modified Hams F12 medium plus fetal calf serum, cells from the mutant are found to clump less and survive longer than their wild-type counterparts. Thus, the degeneration of granule cells observed in these mutants in vivo cannot be a function of irreversibly programmed cell death before postnatal day 7, the age at which cells are dissociated. The possibility that the increased survival is simply a function of initial cell-cell interactions is examined by comparing normal cells grown on glass, plastic, or polylysine-coated glass to each other, and then comparing the behavior of staggerer vs control cells under the same conditions. Although the polylysine coating both reduces the amount of initial clumping and increases the survival of normal cells, it does not completely eliminate the difference between mutant and control. Mutant and control cultures exhibit the same behavior only when culture conditions are changed to include supplementation with horse serum instead of fetal calf serum in addition to the substrate coating.
D000818:Animals; D002470:Cell Survival; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000166:cytology*; D051379:Mice; D008815:Mice, Inbred Strains / Q000235:genetics; D009154:Mutation; D009468:Neuromuscular Diseases / Q000235:genetics*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*