A reliable method for organ culture of neonatal mouse retina with long-term survival

Organ culture systems of the central nervous system have proven to be useful tools for the study of development, differentiation, and degeneration. Some studies have been limited by the inability to maintain the cultures over an extended period. Here we describe an organ culture technique for the mouse retina. This method uses commercially available supplies and reproducible procedures to maintain healthy retinas with normal architecture for 4 weeks in vitro. The system is amenable to quantitative analysis. It can be used with both normal and retinal degeneration (rd) retinas to study of the role of various factors in photoreceptor degeneration in retinal cell fate determination and development.