Abstract
Primary tissue culture is an invaluable technique in cell biology and has a long history in demonstrating its versatility in characterizing cellular morphology, function, and behavior. Here, we describe a modified, low density, long-term, primary neuron culture system to characterize dendritic morphology and synaptic spine organization in developing mouse cortical neurons. While this method can be applied to investigate the signaling pathways of a range of extracellular cues’ effect on neuronal development, we focus on how distinct secreted semaphorins regulate dendritic elaboration and spine morphogenesis in deep layer cortical neurons.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Patrice Maurel (Rutgers-Newark) and members of the Tran lab for their helpful comments. Work in the authors’ lab on semaphorin signaling in cortical neuron morphogenesis was supported by the Charles and Johanna Busch Biomedical grant to T.S.T.
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Peng, SS., Tran, T.S. (2017). Regulation of Cortical Dendrite Morphology and Spine Organization by Secreted Semaphorins: A Primary Culture Approach. In: Terman, J. (eds) Semaphorin Signaling. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1493. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6448-2_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6448-2_15
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