Intrastriatal grafts derived from fetal striatal primordia--IV. Host and donor neurons are not intermixed

Embryonic striatal grafts transplanted into excitotoxin-damaged host striatum develop a heterogeneous structure in which some regions resemble striatum but others do not. In the experiments reported here, we tested for the possibility that the regions resembling striatum were actually derived from host neurons that migrated into the grafts, rather than being derived from donor cells. We placed embryonic striatal grafts into host brains in which striatal cells had been multiply pulse-labeled with [3H]thymidine. Four groups of host rats were exposed to [3H]thymidine at embryonic days 12 and 13-15, 15-18, 16-19, or 20 to postnatal day 1, and were allowed to reach maturity. One week prior to grafting, lesions of the caudoputamen were made unilaterally in each host rat by injecting ibotenic acid. At grafting, dissociated cells from embryonic days 14-16 rat striatal primordia were injected bilaterally into the host caudoputamen. The locations of [3H]thymidine-labeled neurons were analysed by autoradiography eight to 16.5 months post-grafting. Despite the presence of many intensely labeled neurons in the host striatum of rats in all four groups, intensely labeled neurons were rarely found in the cores of grafts. A few weakly labeled small cells appeared in the graft cores, and occasional strongly or weakly labeled medium-sized cells appeared at the margins of the graft zones. Some perivascular cells associated with blood vessels in the grafts were also weakly labeled, but the gliotic tissue surrounding the graft zones was not labeled. These results suggest that very few host striatal neurons migrate into the cores of intrastriatal grafts, or that, if they do, such neurons return to the host striatum or do not survive. At most, surviving host striatal neurons have limited spatial interactions with donor cells at the margins of the grafts, both in the damaged and in the intact host striatal environment. These observations, combined with our previous finding that [3H]thymidine-labeled cells derived from embryonic day 15 striatal primordia do not appear in the host striatum, indicate that no extensive mutual migrations of striatal donor neurons and host neurons occur in the zones of grafting.