Abstract
OBSERVATIONS from several laboratories indicate that neurones from adrenergic ganglia cultured from rats during the perinatal period may, in certain culture conditions, develop several clearly cholinergic characteristics. These cultured neurones may form cholinergic synapses among themselves as well as on cocultured striated muscle1–3, and the cell population developing cholinergic mechanisms derives from an initially adrenergic neuronal population as a gradual shift in synaptic vesicle cytochemistry occurs together with increasing choline acetyltransferase (ChAc) activity and an increasing number of cholinergic synaptic interactions between neurones4,5. In certain conditions these cultured neurones may release both noradrenaline and acetylcholine6. We address here the question of whether this unexpected ability of the adrenergic neurone to develop cholinergic mechanisms in culture derives from the neurone's response to some novel aspect of the tissue culture system or is instead the in vitro expression of a developmental period during which the automatic neurone in vivo is in a labile state of differentiation. Our results favour the latter explanation.
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ROSS, D., JOHNSON, M. & BUNGE, R. Development of cholinergic characteristics in adrenergic neurones is age dependent. Nature 267, 536–539 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1038/267536a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/267536a0
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