A Functional Motor Unit in the Culture Dish: Co-culture of Spinal Cord Explants and Muscle Cells

Anne-Sophie Arnold; Martine Christe; Christoph Handschin

doi:10.3791/3616

A Functional Motor Unit in the Culture Dish: Co-culture of Spinal Cord Explants and Muscle Cells

JoVE Journal
Neuroscience

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JoVE Journal Neuroscience

A Functional Motor Unit in the Culture Dish: Co-culture of Spinal Cord Explants and Muscle Cells

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06:06 min

April 12, 2012

DOI: 10.3791/3616-v

Anne-Sophie Arnold¹, Martine Christe¹, Christoph Handschin¹

¹Biozentrum,University of Basel

Cultured muscle cells are an inadequate model to recapitulate innervated muscle in vivo. A functional motor unit can be reproduced in vitro by innervation of differentiated human primary muscle cells using rat embryo spinal cord explants. This article describes how co-cultures of spinal cord explants and muscle cells are established.

The overall goal of this procedure is to reproduce a functional motor unit in vitro. This is accomplished by culturing human primary muscle cells in conjunction with isolated spinal cord explan from rat embryos. The spinal cord implants are then allowed to innervate the human muscle cells with the explan still attached.

The culture is carefully fed medium until the muscle cells fully differentiate. The molecular and or cellular phenotype of the differentiated muscle cells can then be assessed through a selection of molecular tools. The visual demonstration of this method is critical because first, it is difficult to learn how to isolate the spinal cord.

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