MORPHOLOGICAL HETEROGENEITY OF CULTURED SPINAL AND CEREBRAL RAT OLIGODENDROCYTES

Oligodendrocytes in different central nervous system regions have diss imilar morphologies. In order to find out if immature oligodendrocytes develop different phenotypes spontaneously, neonatal spinal and cereb ral rat oligodendrocytes were cultured in vitro in the absence of neur ons. The results show that spinal oligodendrocytes tend to develop a b ipolar structure with few processes, while cerebral cells tend to beco me multipolar with many processes. A similar spinal-cerebral differenc e was seen in oligodendrocyte-enriched cultures. Hence, spinal and cer ebral oligodendrocytes develop partly different morphologies in vitro. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.