Fig. 2: Immunofluorescence-based characterization of neural spheroids. | Communications Biology

Fig. 2: Immunofluorescence-based characterization of neural spheroids.

From: Functional brain region-specific neural spheroids for modeling neurological diseases and therapeutics screening

Fig. 2

a Spheroid types are similar in size regardless of cell-type composition (top panel contains mostly dopaminergic neurons, bottom contains mostly glutamatergic neurons; both spheroid types are 90% neuron 10% astrocyte); left to right: bright-field image, MAP2 neuronal marker, GFAP astrocyte marker, Hoechst nuclear stain, merged image of MAP2, GFAP, and Hoechst. 272 µm image stack acquired with 0.8 µm z-step, 20X water objective; represented as maximum projection image of 18 images every 20 slices (16 µm). Scale bar = 100 µm, except for bright field (scale bar = 400 µm). b 3D rendering from confocal z-stacks of VTA-like (top panel) and PFC-like (bottom panel) spheroids stained with neuronal cell-type markers; Left to right: Hoechst nuclear stain, tyrosine hydroxylase (TH, dopaminergic marker), vGluT1 (glutamatergic marker), and Parvalbumin (PV, GABAergic marker) along with a 3D rendering showing TH, vGluT, and PV expression in the center of each spheroid. Scale bar = 100 µm. c Confocal images showing MAP2 staining and presynaptic marker, synapsin (left panel), and postsynaptic marker, Homer (right panel), indicating functional synapses. Scale bar = 100 µm (full) or 15 µm (zoom-in).

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