Isolating Primary Melanocyte-like Cells from the Mouse Heart

The overall goal of this procedure is to isolate viable cardiac melanocyte like cells from the mouse heart. This is accomplished by first harvesting hearts from euthanized mice. The second step is to mince the hearts and dissociate the cells using enzymatic digestion and mechanical agitation.

Next, the slurry of cells is centrifuged and the pellet containing the cardiomyocytes and melanocyte like cells is resus suspended. The final step is to plate and culture. The cells ultimately isolated cardiac melanocyte like cells can be used for patch studies or microarray analysis in response to pathophysiological stressor to assess cellular excitability or the status of the transcriptome.