9 Culture of Avian Sympathetic Neurons

Publisher Summary This chapter provides a summary of techniques that have proven to be successful over many years in laboratory in the study of sympathetic neuron development, and that can be easily established by newcomers in the field. A particular property of immature sympathetic neurons is the possibility of obtaining exogenous gene expression by transfection. The reason that this method is much less time consuming and difficult than the single-cell injections widely used for primary neuron cultures, details of this procedure are also provided in the chapter. Two major sources of sympathetic neurons are commonly used, the neonatal superior cervical ganglia (SCG) of the rat and mouse and avian lumbosacral chain ganglia. The advantage of the latter ganglia is that ganglia containing mainly proliferating, immature neurons and ganglia containing differentiated, postmitotic neurons are easily accessible, and large numbers of cells can be obtained. Recent data indicate that sympathetic neurons of SCG and trunk sympathetic ganglia belong to different cell lineages and may display different properties.