Glial cells are actively produced during the growth of the mouse central nervous system, during young adult life, but it is not known whether this cell production continues throughout the life of an animal. This problem was examined by radioautography of the corpus callosum of aged, 9 to 10-month old and adult, 4-month old mice, each given an intraperitoneal pulse injection or continuous subcutaneous infusion of 3H-thymidine and then randomly assigned to one of the following experimental groups: aged and adult mice, a 2 hour group of 5 and 6 mice, respectively, which received a single intraperitoneal pulse injection of 5 uCi per g body weight and were sacrificed 2 hours later; aged mice, a 30 day group in which 5 mice were continuously infused with 3H-thymidine at the rate of 1 uCi per g body weight per day and were sacrificed by perfusion at day 30; aged mice, a 30 + 60 day group of 2 mice and a 30 + 180 day group of 3 mice which were continuously infused with 3H-thymidine for 30 days and then left untreated for 60 or 180 days, respectively, before sacrifice; adult mice, a 7 and 15 day group in which 6 and 5 mice, respectively, were continuously infused with 3H-thymidine at the rate of 1 uCi per g body weight per day and were sacrificed by perfusion at day 7 and 15, respectively. A total of 11,114 and 14,169 glial cells were counted in the corpus callosum of aged and adult mice using toluidine-blue stained preparations. The results for the aged mice are as follows. In the 2 hour group, the labelled cells were found to be immature glial precursor cells with a labelling index of 8.15%. These cells showed a labelling index of 18.69% in the 30 day group and 0% and 0%, respectively, in the 30 + 60 and 30 + 180 day groups. These results indicate "renewal" of the precursor cells. Mature oligodendrocytes or astrocytes were not labelled in the 2 hour group. In the 30 day group their labelling index was 1.12% and 11.90%, respectively. The oligodendrocyte index remained at
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.72048 |
| Date | January 1985 |
| Creators | McCarthy, Gerald Francis. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Anatomy.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 000222302, proquestno: AAINL24047, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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