METHOD FOR MEASURING GAP JUNCTIONAL INTERCELLULAR COMMUNICATION BY FLUORESCENCE RECOVERY AFTER PHOTOBLEACHING

The present study was designed to establish a method for measuring cul tured neuroglial gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) of rat cerebral cortices by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (F RAP) analysis technique. As a result of the managements, such as cell culture, fluorescence staining, fluorescence excitement, laser scannin g and computer analysis et al., fluorescence inside all selected cells recovered in different degrees, i.e., fluorescence relative intensiti es in the 1st-5th cell raised 14%, 28%, 43%, 17.5% and 12.5% respectiv ely after scanning 15.4 min, the mean value of recovery was 18.57 +/- 10.06% and the mean rate of fluorescence recovery was 1.223 +/- 0.785% /min for three samples (n=14 cells). The result showed that the FRAP i s an ideal method for measuring GJIC.