Development of A New Method to Investigate Cell Migration in the Developing Central Nervous System

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We have devised a novel method to study cell migration in vitro and in vivo. The new method involves UV-irradiating cells through a fiber optic cable and subsequently identifying irradiated cells by virtue of the formation of thymine-dimer in the nuclei. We applied the new method to investigate migration of neuronal precursor cells in the rostral migratory stream in the neonatal rat olfactory bulb. In vitro, UV-irradiation for one second through the fiber optic cable allowed formation of enough thymine-dimers to be detected immunohistochemically after 6 hours of incubation. A significant proportion of irradiated cells continued to migrate in the same direction at the same speed as before irradiation. There was no significant difference in the cell-migration distance at 6 hours with or without the UV-irradiation in vitro. We applied this UV-thymine-dimer labeling method to study cell migration in the olfactory bulb in vivo, With this method, we could find that a small number of cells migrated also caudally. Three times more cells in the SV of the olfactory bulb migrated rostrally, but there was also a significant extent of caudally directed cell migration. The new method also allowed us to measure the speed of cell-migration, which was estimated to be about 70 ? m/hr to the rostral direction and 37 ? m/hr to the caudal direction, at maximum.