Targeted ablations of genes and analysis of animal models is the classical strategy for enrolling specific retinal gene function. However, transgenic, retina-specific or conditional knockout mouse models often display early lethality or suffer from severe malformations, preventing an analysis beyond embryonic or early postnatal stages. Primary cell culture is an alternative to investigate the e...

Although the cellular turnover of resting urothelium is very low, its regenerative capacity is known to be outstanding. In organotypic mouse urothelial cultures closely mimicking the differentiation and multilayering of normal urothelium, we examined the cell biological mechanisms underlying urothelial regeneration and the specific role of growth factors and several extracellular matrix (ECM) c...

OBJECTIVE We sought to define molecular and cellular participants that mediate motor neuron injury in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis using a coculture system. METHODS We cocultured embryonic stem cell-derived motor neurons with organotypic slice cultures from wild-type or SOD1G93A (MT) mice. We examined axon lengths and cell survival of embryonic stem cell-derived motor neurons. We defined and...

AIM To detect cytotoxic effects of blood serum (BS) from schizophrenia patients on astrocytes and neurons in the human fetal brain organotypic culture. MATERIAL AND METHODS Authors studied the human fetal brain organotypic culture after the application of BS from 20 healthy donors and 33 untreated patients with attack-like progressive schizophrenia (ICD-10: schizophrenia, paranoid type, F20.0...

microglia cells are a subset of central nervous system (cns) macrophages. changes in the cns such as injury, or developmental events, follow by morphological and physiological changes in microglia cells. in this study organotypic brain slice cultures under serum free condition were used to investigate the morphology and lectin histochemistry of microglia and macrophages in the cns in vitro. mic...

Vertebrate photoreceptor cells are polarized neurons highly specialized for light absorption and visual signal transduction. Photoreceptor cells consist of the light sensitive outer segment and the biosynthetic active inner segment linked by a slender connecting cilium. The function of mature photoreceptor cells is strictly dependent on this compartmentalization which is maintained in the speci...