Expression analysis of astrocytes isolated from the rat forebrain

Comparison of expression data of rat forebrain astrocytes from P1, P7 acutely isolated by immunopanning or cultured with astrocytes prepared by McCarthy and de Vellis' (1980) method. Elucidating the genes induced by serum in immunopannedrat astrocytes. Three biological replicates for each sample were done. MD-astrocytes were prepared as described in McCarthy and de Vellis 1980 and harvested for mRNA after 7DIV. IP-astrocytes were isolated from P1 or P7 Sprague Dawley rats and processed for RNA immediately (IP-astrocytes P1/P7), or cultured for 7 days in HBEGF before harvesting (Cult. IP-astrocytes P1/P7). For the serum studies, we plated IP-astrocytes P7 in MD-astrocyte media containing 10% fetal calf serum immediately after isolation and cultured them for 7 days. After 7 days, the cultures were either processed for total RNA or washed 3x with dPBS and astrocyte base media with HBEGF was added. The cells were cultured for an additional 7 days and then processed for RNA. We isolated total RNA with the QIAshredder and Qiagen RNeasy Mini Kit. We used the 3’IVT Express kit for preparation of the RNA and the Rat Genome 230 2.0 Array chip (Affymetrix, Santa Clara). RT-PCR was used to elucidate the level of contamination in each cell sample.