文摘
After decades of relative neglect, microglia and astrocytes (also known as glia) are emerging as key players in understanding the brain function and pathophysiology, well beyond their originally conceived “neuronal support” role. Glia shape neuronal development and function in health and disease. In fetal brain, so far methods were limited to study glial function. Here we present a new protocol and paradigm to derive pure primary microglia and astrocytes cultures from a mature fetal sheep brain, a powerful and widely used animal model of human brain development bearing high resemblance to human brain. This technique allows versatile studies of glia function including assessing the genomic properties using next-generation sequencing approaches. With such model we aim to provide a useful novel platform to tackle the challenge of understanding the diversity in glial phenotype and function in a large developing brain.