Flow cytometric characterization of neural precursor cells and their progeny

It is now clear that the adult central nervous system contains a population of neural stem and progenitor cells which act as a reservoir to underpin cell genesis for the lifetime of the animal. Unfortunately, understanding how these cells are activated both under normal conditions and following injury or disease has been a difficult task, owing not only to the rarity of these populations, but also to a paucity of cell type-specific markers. In this chapter, we will discuss in detail the methods involved in generating single cell suspension from the periventricular region of the adult mouse brain appropriate for cell sorting, and how to use negative selection strategies to produce an essentially pure population of neurosphere-forming precursor cells. While these methods have been tailored for the sorting of neural precursor cells, these methods can be easily adapted to sort for any subpopulation of neural cells based on a variety of cell surface antigen expression.