Neural cell markers: the end of the beginning.

Publisher Summary This chapter presents an overview of neural cell marker. To understand the molecular details of how neural cells interact with each other in the developing and mature nervous system, it is necessary to study homogeneous populations of neural cells interacting in vitro . There are two ways of achieving this: one is to study established neural cell lines and the other is to find ways of purifying normal neural cells that can be maintained and studied in culture. Cell surface markers are used not only for cell identification but also for cell separation. In principle, this can be done by either positive or negative selection. Negative selection procedures have been most widely used, and this approach has been used to purify Schwann cells. Having the major neural cell populations specifically marked is not the end of the neural cell marker story. One can anticipate using these and new markers to purify astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and neurons. New markers may subdivide the major glial cell types into functional subclasses.