Microexplant Cultures of the Cerebellum

This chapter is devoted to a simple method for culturing developing rat cerebellum. The method can also be used for rat hippocampus embryonic age 18 d (E18), cerebral cortex (E18), and even spinal cord, but at an earlier stage of development (E14). This method was initially designed to obtain long-term survival of cerebellar macroneurons, Purkinje cells, and deep nuclear macroneurons (Moonen et al, 1982 ; Neale et al., 1982 ). Indeed, in cultures in which a single cell suspension is seeded, virtually all the neurons die between 5 and 10 d, but significant survival is obtained if small aggregates of cells (microexplants), rather than single cells, are seeded. The term “microexplant” was used to stress the difference from the classic cerebellar explants, which consist of a thin cerebellar slice, which are much more organized tissue samples.