title: Prolonging life in chick forebrain-neuron culture and acquiring spontaneous spiking activity on a microelectrode array.
abstract: Various types of animal neurons were cultured on a microelectrode array (MEA) platform to form biosensors to detect potential environmental neurotoxins. For a large-scale screening tool, rodent MEA-based cortical-neuron biosensors would be very costly but chick forebrain neurons (FBNs) are abundant, cost-effective, and easy to dissect. However, chick FBNs have a lifespan of ~14 days in vitro and their spontaneous spike activity (SSA) has been difficult to develop and detect. We used a high-density neuron-glia co-culture on an MEA to prolong chick FBN lifetime to 3 months with lifetime-long SSA. A remarkable embryonic age-dependency in the culture's morphology, lifespan, and most features of SSA signal was discovered. Our results show the feasibility of developing a chick FBN-MEA biosensor and also establish a new electrophysiological platform for functional study of an in vitro neuronal network.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, Clemson University, 201-5 Rhodes Research Hall, Clemson, SC, 29634, USA.
authors.forename: Serena Y
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Kuang
authors.forename: Zhonghai
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Ting
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Lina
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Tingfei
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Xi
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kindy
authors.forename: Bruce Z
authors.initials: BZ
authors.lastname: Gao
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D002470:Cell Survival; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D002642:Chick Embryo; D018920:Coculture Techniques; D055724:Electrophysiological Phenomena; D008839:Microelectrodes; D009457:Neuroglia / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*