Tenascin-C (TnC) promotes globoid cell formation. (A-D) Primary
glial cell cultures (mixture of astrocytes and microglia) grown either on laminin
(A, B) or TnC (C, D), were treated with either vehicle
(A, C) or psychosine (B, D) for 7 consecutive days. Cells were
fixed and immunostained for the microglial marker, Iba-1 (green) and counter-stained with
DAPI (blue; nuclei). (E) Seven to 9 visual fields generally containing 50 to
70 total DAPI-positive nuclei under 20x magnification were randomly chosen and numbers of
multinucleated cells were counted. Psychosine treatment induced multinucleation of
Iba-1-positive cells regardless of ECM substrate although glia grown on TnC produced
significantly more •globoid-like• cells when compared to laminin-grown
cultures. Scale bar: A-D, 20 µm. Two-way ANOVA; ***p < 0.0001
with n = 3/condition. Data are shown as mean ± SE. No Tx, no treatment; Psy,
psychosine.