A new method of isolating spinal motor neurons from fetal mouse

作者：Wang, Weifang; Qi, Bao; Lv, Hui; Wu, Fei; Liu, Lulu; Wang, Wei; Wang, Quanquan; Hu, Liangchen; Hao, Yanlei^*; Wang, Yuzhong^*

来源：Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 2017, 288: 57-61.

DOI：10.1016/j.jneumeth.2017.06.014

• Fetal mouse
• Primary motor neurons
• Spinal cord
• Density gradient

Background: Isolating of primary motor neurons from animal embryos is critical for the study of neurological disease including mechanistic discovery and therapeutic development. Density gradient centrifuge taking advantage of the buoyant of motor neuron permits the enrichment of motor neurons. Despite the metrizamide, an OptiPrep medium has been introduced to separate the motor neurons by gradient centrifuge.
New method: We hereby used single density gradient of OptiPrep medium to isolate the spinal motor neurons from the fetal mouse.
Results: Single density gradient of OptiPrep medium is effective to isolate spinal motor neurons from the fetal mouse. The immunofluorescence staining analysis showed that the purity of cultured motor neurons at 72 h was between 90% and 95%.
Comparison with existing method: Four gradients of OptiPrep medium have been previously used to isolate the motor neurons from spinal cord of mouse. In this study, the single gradient of OptiPrep medium was demonstrated to effectively isolate spinal motor neurons from the fetal mouse.
Conclusions: The single gradient of OptiPrep medium is enough to produce high purity of spinal motor neurons from the fetal mouse.

• 出版日期2017-8-15
• 单位济宁医学院; 山东大学; 天津医科大学