Etchevers:Notebook/Genomics of hNCC/2008/11/18

Genomics of human neural crest cells

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Feeding and looking at cells See the confocal notes from today for observations on how to use the scope. Overall, most cells with alpha-smooth muscle actin also expressed some low levels of CNPase (2',3'-cyclic nucleotide 3'-phosphodiesterase) in their cytoplasm. A couple of cells had CNPase without SMA and I photographed some of these. However, I need to download the free portion of the proprietary software to be able to upload .tif images. Also learned to rotate and make z-stacks through a given thickness, as well as project only keeping max intensity pixels (allowing to keep the best of a number of photos and much more focused than in a typical fluo photo. Despite what I read in the product literature to the contrary, CNPase is an admitted glial "marker" but only 3 refs in Medline refer to its possible implication in the melanocyte lineage, and they're all from earlier than 1987. Fed cells with neural medium and with Rich medium the two cell dishes that I had split last Friday. Cells seem happy (some have 2 nuclei) but incredibly flat, stellate and not different between the two media. Many of them look a lot like hepatic stellate cells/myofibroblasts and therefore have something in common with mesangial cells and pericytes. Others have lots of long processes in a radial fashion and yet do not look thin enough to be dendrites/axons. Will have to add in more, later.*Heather 12:27, 18 November 2008 (EST):