Researcher(s)
- Miriam Gerges, Biological Sciences, University of Delaware
Faculty Mentor(s)
- Austin Keeler, Biological sciences, University of Delaware
Abstract
Title:
Effects of Oil Overlay Type on Autonomously Regulated Oxygen Microenvironment Efficacy for Primary Somatosensory Cultures
Authors:
Miriam Gerges, Shrutee Gupta, Austin Safadi, Yulia Skrypniuk, Nicole Guarino, Austin Keeler
Abstract:
Primary neuronal cultures are essential tools for studying neuronal development, disease, and regeneration. However, conventional in vitro cultures are typically maintained under atmospheric oxygen (~21%), whereas neurons in vivo are exposed to much lower physiological oxygen levels (approximately 2–9%). This mismatch in oxygen environments can stress primary neuronal cultures and heighten the dissimilarities in experimental results between cultured and in vivo neurons. Recent work has shown that applying an oil overlay to cell cultures can create a diffusion barrier that autonomously regulates oxygen availability and more closely mimics the neuronal microenvironment. These autonomously regulated oxygen microenvironments (AROM) have been shown to improve the growth and survival of cultured cells. However, the effect of AROM on primary somatosensory neurons is unknown. Here, we studied the impact of AROM on adult mouse trigeminal ganglia, neural tissue involved in pain processing across the face and an important model for studying chronic pain conditions. We compared the effects of AROMs generated from different oils on trigeminal cultures, and then assessed the survival, growth, and overall health of the trigeminal ganglia cultures. We found that silicone oil produced robust survival and growth, compared to control, atmospheric cultures and other oil overlays. These results provide a new method to culture primary somatosensory ganglia cells at physiological oxygen levels for biomedical research.