Abstract
Dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons are a functionally diverse population of sensory neurons with specialized morphology to respond to external stimuli. These pseudo-unipolar neurons extend a single axon that bifurcates to innervate the periphery and spinal cord, allowing sensory information from the environment to be transferred rapidly to the central nervous system. During development, these DRG neurons rely on peripheral target-derived neurotrophins for survival. Due to their unique morphology, DRG neurons exhibit spatially complex signaling and regulated gene expression that are challenging to study in vivo or in conventional cultures. The development of compartmented culture systems has been invaluable to the study of neurotrophin signaling, mRNA transport and localization, and local protein synthesis in axons. Here we describe the setup and maintenance of rat DRG neurons in two different compartmented culture platforms: Campenot cultures and microfluidics chambers. These systems are highly complementary and so together can be used for biochemical analysis and for high resolution imaging of neuronal cell bodies and their extensive axons.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Institute of Health Grant RO1 NS050674 to R.A.S. and F31 NS077620 (NINDS) to S.J.F. We thank Katharina Cosker for contributing Campenot figure data and helpful comments, and Sarah Pease for helpful advice with the microfluidics protocol.
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Fenstermacher, S.J., Pazyra-Murphy, M.F., Segal, R.A. (2015). Campenot Cultures and Microfluidics Provide Complementary Platforms for Spatial Study of Dorsal Root Ganglia Neurons. In: Biffi, E. (eds) Microfluidic and Compartmentalized Platforms for Neurobiological Research. Neuromethods, vol 103. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2510-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2510-0_6
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