Immunoflouresence of Enteric Glial Cells

These images were taken to test the hypothesis that glial cells within the myenteric ganglia of the enteric nervous system contain a similar proportion of Gfap+ and Sox2+ cells in adult mice as in mice prior to weaning. We additionally performed EdU staining to test whether glial cells in adult mice continue to proliferate. Immunoflouresence imaging of was performed on whole-mount longitudinal muscle-myenteric plexus (LMMP) tissue from the small intestine of Plp1::GFP mice. We found that glial cells within ganglia are markedly enriched for Gfap and Sox2 protein in both young mice (age P14) and adult mice (age 14 weeks). While glial cells are much more proliferative in P14 mice than 14-week-old animals, some ganglionic glial cells in the adult mice were EdU+, thus demonstrating potential for enteric glial cells to proliferate in mature mice.