Isolation of glial cell-enriched and -depleted populations from mouse cerebellum by density gradient centrifugation and electronic cell sorting

Preparative amounts of populations enriched and depleted in glial cells have been isolated from 10-day-old mouse cerebella. Discontinuous density bovine serum albumin (BSA) gradients provide two distinct populations: the one derived from the 10-15% BSA interface is enriched in cyclic nucleotide phosphohydrolase (CNPase) activity, and a percentage of S-100, GFA protein, and NS-1 antigen-positive cells; the other, located as the 15-31% interface, contains a cell population depleted in these compounds. This report also describes the first use of flow microfluorimetry and electronic cell sorting techniques for the analysis and isolation of cell populations derived from the mammalian central nervous system. Glial cell-enriched and -depleted populations obtained by BSA density gradient centrifugation were analyzed for their forward angle light scattering properties and their capacity to bind anti-corpus anti-serum to the cell surface. The glial cell-enriched fraction shows a different frequency distribution of light scattering than the glial-depleted fraction. Anti-corpus callosum antiserum binds preferentially to the glial cell-rich fraction. Cells can be sorted into corpus callosum antigen-positive and -negative cell fractions and recovered with a viability of more than 95% as judged by trypan blue exclusion. Anti-corpus callosum-positive sorted cells are enriched in CNPase activity, S-100, and glial fibrillary acidic proteins.