Figure 7. Pretreatment with neomycin does not affect the formation of stem cell spheres.

Utricles were placed in culture and treated for 24 hr with 2 mM neomycin. Sensory epithelia were then isolated, dissociated, and placed in suspension culture. The number of spheres in such cultures was quantified after three, five or seven days, and compared with sphere numbers observed in parallel cultures that had not been treated with neomycin (controls). Sphere morphology and size appeared similar in cultures derived from untreated utricles (A) vs. neomycin-treated utricles (B, C). In addition, the numbers of spheres obtained from neomycin-treated utricles was not significantly different from the numbers derived from control utricles (p=0.20–0.25, t-test). Scale bar = 50 µM.