Scanning electron microscopy of cell aggregation: Cardiac and mixed retina-cardiac cell suspensions☆

[摘要] Reaggregatesofcellsfrom7-dayembryonicchickhearts,10-dayneuralretinasandrespectivecellmixtureswereexaminedbyscanningelectronmicroscopy(SEM).Cardiaccellaggregatesformedduringthefirst2hourswerecomposedofroundedcellsarrangedinlinearorbranchedarrays.Byfurthercollectionofsinglecellsandaccretionofcellclusters,theaggregatesincreasedinsizeandformedlargegrape-likemasses.By12hours,heartaggregatesassumedasphericalshapewithpartialsorting-outofmyogenicfromnon-myogeniccells;themuscleelementsoccupiedtheinterioroftheaggregates,whereasflattened,squamous-likecells,ofanon-musclecharacter,coveredthesurfaceinamultilayeredepithelium.Singleroundedcellswerestillfoundonthesurfaceof12to24-houraggregates;however,theywereabsentby48hours,suggestingthatthecollectionoffreecellsbythecardiacaggregatesceasedduringthesecondday.Earlyaggregates(2hours)ofretinacellsshowedinitialstagesofaxonalanddendriticoutgrowthcharacteristicofneuraltissue.Examinationofheterotypicaggregatesofneuralretinaandmyocardialcellsafter2to6hoursshowedsmallgroupsofretinacellsattachedtothesurfaceoftheheartcellclusters.Theretinacellsdidnotappeartoberandomlydistributedwithintheearlyaggregatesbutformedsmalltissuespecificclustersevenby2hoursinculture.TheseresultsindicatethatSEMshouldbeavaluabletoolinthefurtheranalysisofhomo-andheterotypiccellularaggregation.

[学科分类] 生物科学（综合）