Abstract
THE THY-1 ANTIGEN has been exploited by immunologists as a marker for thymus-derived lymphocytes in mice1. Since its first description by Reif and Allen, it has been known to be present in equivalent amounts in brain and thymus2. However, in contrast to thymus, where adult levels of Thy-1 are present at birth, Thy-1 in mouse and rat brain increases with physiological maturation of the brain from 1–2% at birth to 100% of the adult level by 3–6 weeks of age2–5. It is widely assumed that neurones are the principal cell type which express Thy-1 and by implication that the increase in brain Thy-1 during neonatal development is related to increases in neuronal membrane as a result of dendritic arborisation5. I describe here the use of monoclonal anti-Thy-1 antiserum in combination with other recently defined neural cell markers6 to study the distribution of Thy-1 on cells grown in long-term cultures of rat central nervous system. I have found that Thy-1 appears on astrocytes as well as neurones and fibroblasts but not on oligodendrocytes, and that the rate of appearance of Thy-1 on cultured astrocytes parallels that of Thy-1 in brain in vivo. This is the first report to identify unambiguously Thy-1 on astrocytes. It settles a controversial point about the Thy-1 distribution on neural cells and clearly demonstrates that previous implications (see discussion) that neurones are the major Thy-1-positive cells in the brain is incorrect.
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PRUSS, R. Thy-1 antigen on astrocytes in long-term cultures of rat central nervous system. Nature 280, 688–690 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1038/280688a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/280688a0
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