Modified procedure for primary culture of retinal Müller cell in newborn rat / 中华实验眼科杂志

ABSTRACT

BackgroundMüller cells has been recognized as being vital in both healthy and diseased retina.Recently,these cells even have been identified to be the source of retinal progenitor cells.In order to study the possible function of the retinal Müller cells,it is important to establish a practical procedure to obtain the purified cells. ObjectiveThis study was to simplify the procedure of primary culture and purification of retinal Müller cells in vitro. MethodsEyeballs of SPF newborn SD rats were enucleated and retinas were dissected free after soaking the eyeballs overnight in DMEM/F12 medium in room temperature.Then the retinas were mechanically dissociated into micro aggregates and cultured in DMEM/F12 medium containing 10％ FBS for 8-10 days.The floating retinal aggregates and debris were removed and the medium was changed in 2-3 days interval to get more purified flat cell population.Cultured cells were passaged after confluent.Immunofluorescence staining was used to detect the response to glutamine synthetase (GS) and Vimentin for the identification of the cultured Müller cells,and flow cytometry (FCM) was used to estimate the purity of the cells. Results Cultured Müller cells had large cellular body and richer cytoplasm.More than 95％ of the cells showed the positive response for GS with the brown staining in cytoplasm and cellular nuclei,and the positive stainiug also was seen for Vimentin in cytoplasm.FCM showed that 99.7％ of the cells were GS positive after 3 passages.Conclusions Modified procedure in this experiment is a simple and practical method for culturing retinal Müller cells.