In most studies the primary microglial cells of the rat brain are use for experiments and I have the BV2 cells ,, So can I use the BV2 cells instead of primary microglial cells of the rat pups brain?
Yes you can use the BV2 microglial cells instead of primary cells. many of researched used BV2 cells as well. However if you use both BV2 cells and primary cells and showed the same results, it would be great results. The impact of the article will also be increased.
I agree to the previous answers. The most important fact is, that BV2 cells have a different gene expression pattern than primary microglia. In general, these cells seem to be pre-activated and might behave different upon stimuli. Thus, results obtained from BV2 cells may not be the same in primary microglia cultures and should be handled carefully.
thanks to all and appreciate your comments .... actually I want to use the microglial cells for phagocytosis mechanism and I think the phagocytosis process of the both primary and BV2 cells may be the same????
Regards
I agree about the comment above just want to ask you to be aware about the passage of the BV-2 cells, because after some passages they start to be less responsive.
regards
Like previous answers already stated there are differences between BV2 cells and primary cells. BV2s are cell lines and cell lines are programmed to proliferate and thus expression patterns and active signaling pathways differ from primary cells - microglia like any other cells go through maturation/differentiation process (which is quite nicely captured in Prinz & Priller, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 15, 300–312 (2014) ; Fig 2). Phagocytosis relies on various receptor expressions and while BV2 cells phagocyte effectively they might lack the control or selectivity that primary microglial cells posses.
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