The Journal of Neuroscience, May 15, 2000, 20(10):3695-3704
Isolation and In Vitro Differentiation of
Conditionally Immortalized Murine Olfactory Receptor Neurons
Robert D.
Barber1, 2,
Donna E.
Jaworsky2,
King-Wai
Yau1, 2, and
Gabriele V.
Ronnett1, 3
1 Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Departments of
2 Neuroscience and 3 Neurology, Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205
Two major challenges exist in our understanding of the olfactory
system. One concerns the enormous combinatorial code underlying odorant
discrimination by odorant receptors. The other relates to neurogenesis
and neuronal development in the olfactory epithelium. To address these
issues, continuous cell cultures containing olfactory receptor neurons
(ORNs) were obtained from olfactory epithelia of
H-2Kb-tsA58 transgenic mice. ORNs were detected and
characterized by immunocytochemistry, RT-PCR, and Western blot for the
markers G
olf, adenylyl cyclase III, the olfactory
cyclic nucleotide-gated channel subunits, and olfactory marker protein.
In culture, epidermal growth factor and nerve growth factor stimulated
proliferation, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor and neurotrophin-3
induced cellular maturation.
Clonal cell lines were isolated by fluorescence-activated cell sorting
with anti-neural cell adhesion molecule antibodies, and of 144 single cells plated, 39 clones were expanded, propagated, and stored in
liquid nitrogen. All attempts at recovery of clonal lines from frozen
stocks have been successful. The most thoroughly characterized clone,
3NA12, expressed ORN markers and responded to stimulation by single
odorants. Each odorant activated ~1% of cells in a clonal line, and
this suggests that many different odorant receptors may be expressed by
these clonal cells. Therefore, these cell lines and the method by which
they have been obtained represent a significant advance in the
generation of olfactory cell cultures and provide a system to
investigate odorant coding and olfactory neurogenesis.
Key words:
olfactory receptor neurons; H-2Kb-tsA58 transgenic mouse; cell lines; immortalization; proliferation; trophic factors
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