I am doing GFAP immunostaining of floating sections in the brain of developing mice. I found most astrocytes in the periphery or near white matter. I hardly find astrocyte in the striatum or the midbrain. is this normal or there is something wrong in the staining?
I have no personal experience in this matter, but a quick look at the Allen Institute's publicly available data, suggests this is normal-ish.
http://mouse.brain-map.org/gene/show/14356
Especially in striatum!
GFAP staining won't show up very well in the mouse cortex you should use another marker such as S100B or Connecxin30 or Aldh. This will give you a better understanding of astrocytes in the developing brain.
Dear Abdelraheim,
Yes GFAP-labelled astrocytes are primarily in the white matter or fibre tracts. There are also GFAP-labelled astrocytes in the grey matter but the numbers are lower. See my following publications for an example and further references.
best wishes, Refik
Article Postnatal changes in TASK-1 and TREK-1 expression in rat bra...
Article The two-pore domain K+ channel TASK-1 is closely associated ...
Depending how early in development, you can look in the RMS for a positive control for your GFAP staining, as there is a dense network of astrocytes in this location that stain well for GFAP that begins in development and persists throughout adulthood. See figure 2a in paper below.
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/32/5/1687.full
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