To begin, mince the isolated brains into pieces in the 50-milliliter conical tube with a sterile disposable scalpel blade. Add trypsin to the tube at a final concentration of 0.25%Immerse the tube in a 35 to 38 degrees Celsius hot water bath for 15 minutes. Gently pipette the tissue suspension up and down to dissociate cells.
Then add 0.5 milliliters of fetal bovine serum to the homogenized suspension to neutralize trypsin activity. Filter the cell suspension through the 70-micrometer nylon mesh cell strainer. Using a one-milliliter syringe plunger, gently grind the tissue into the cell strainer.
Then centrifuge the conical tube at 300 g for five minutes at four degrees Celsius. Discard the Poly-L-Ornithine in the T25 flasks and rinse the flasks three times with five milliliters of PBS. Carefully decant the tube to remove the supernatant and resuspend the cell pellet by gently pipetting with two to three milliliters of complete neurobasal media.
Plate the cells in the Poly-L-Ornithine-coated T25 flasks with approximately 20 million cells per flask in five milliliters of complete neurobasal media. Incubate the cell culture at 37 degrees Celsius in a 5%carbon dioxide incubator. Neurons in T25 flasks and 96-well plates adhered and formed neurite processes by day three.
Suboptimal neuron cultures contained cell clumps and debris.
