Figure 2.

Hippocampal precursors activated by norepinephrine are self-renewing and multipotent. A, A large increase in cell numbers was observed when a single norepinephrine-derived large neurosphere was passaged up to 10 times. B, Relative percentage of the primary neurospheres expressing markers of astrocytes, neurons and oligodendrocytes in control versus NE-treated cultures. Note that all neurospheres examined contained GFAP-positive astrocytes. However, a significantly larger proportion of neurospheres expressed the neuronal marker, βIII tubulin, in the norepinephrine-treated vs the control group. MBP-positive oligodendrocytes were only present in norepinephrine-stimulated neurospheres. C, D, An example of control (C) and norepinephrine-derived (D) neurospheres showing immunofluorescence for GFAP (green) and βIII tubulin (red). Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue). Scale bars, 100 μm. Note the presence of a large number of βIII tubulin-positive neurons in the norepinephrine-derived sphere. E, MBP-expressing oligodendrocytes (green) were also present in norepinephrine-stimulated neurospheres. Scale bar, 30 μm.