Immortalizing central nervous system cells

This unit presents methods for isolating clonal, neural-derived cell lines. One approach for isolating such neural cell lines involves a replication-deficient retrovirus encoding a specific oncogene and a selectable marker which are used to infect dissociated CNS cells dissected at a developmental stage at which the cell population of interest has not undergone its terminal mitotic division. Also presented is a method for cloning by limiting dilution, which may be necessary to obtain a pure population of cells. Following growth under appropriate selection conditions, clones are isolated and tested for their ability to differentiate with the desired phenotypic properties. A method is also provided for coating tissue culture dishes, which is necessary for successful culture of CNS neurons.