0000000000772502
AUTHOR
Riccardo Mormino
Two immortalized rat astrocyte cell lines as in vitro model for specific cell proliferation studies: cytogenetic and epigenomic characterization and diversification
Here we report differences between: 1) a heterogeneous population of primary rat brain astrocytes (Primary), in culture since several years ago, and 2) a cloned cell line (Clone), obtained from the Primary cells. Both populations maintain astrocyte morphology but, according to cytogenetic and epigenomic characterization, differ for the chromosomal asset from rat normal cells (42 chromosomes): Primary cells show mostly a bimodal karyotype with 41 or 43 chromosomes, and Clone has a unique-modal karyotype of 43 chromosomes. Interestingly, we also found that both cell lines show genome-wide DNA hypomethylation, with Clone showing even more pronounced demethylation respect to Primary cells. Thes…
Establishment and Preliminary Characterization of Three Astrocytic Cells Lines Obtained from Primary Rat Astrocytes by Sub-Cloning.
Gliomas are complex and heterogeneous tumors that originate from the glial cells of the brain. The malignant cells undergo deep modifications of their metabolism, and acquire the capacity to invade the brain parenchyma and to induce epigenetic modifications in the other brain cell types. In spite of the efforts made to define the pathology at the molecular level, and to set novel approaches to reach the infiltrating cells, gliomas are still fatal. In order to gain a better knowledge of the cellular events that accompany astrocyte transformation, we developed three increasingly transformed astrocyte cell lines, starting from primary rat cortical astrocytes, and analyzed them at the cytogenet…