Does anybody have a good reference on the number of cells (including neurons, glial cells...) present in 1µg of mouse brain tissue? More precisely on pre frontal cortex, hypocampus, or striatum (caudate)?
Hello, Joachim's way of coming up with a number is elegant. However, you have to keep in mind that there is a LOT of variation in cell density throughout the brain. Hence the number will depend on the region you're interested in.
Hello, Joachim's way of coming up with a number is elegant. However, you have to keep in mind that there is a LOT of variation in cell density throughout the brain. Hence the number will depend on the region you're interested in.
It depends on which area you have selected for tissue collection. So number may vary from area to area within brain.
Thank you for your answers.
To answer question here, I modified the question.
We are isolating cells from the caudate, hypocampus and pre frontal cortex of mice.
Without any first investigation, I found that 70 neurons is a relatively low number per mg of tissue.
I think an elegant way would be to make a suspension and to estimate the density, but I was thinking that these kind of values were already known.
I think it varies a lot, depending on which part of the brain and which species. Rodents have a smaller amount of neurons than primates, for ex.
Suzana Hercolano-Houzel also works on that. She counted the number of neurons in a lot of various taxa. You might find the answer in one of her publications.
A much easier and quantitative way of evaluating the number of cells in a given tissue is using the DNA quantity measurements. This number (amount of DNA/cell) is available in the literature. All diploid cells have certain fixed amount of DNA per cell and thus by quantitating the total DNA in your tissue will give you an estimate of the number of (neuronal and non-neuronal) cells in the sample.
Hi Casadei Nicolas, Professor Suzana Herculano research the number of neurons.
Take a look at her publications.
http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.do?metodo=apresentar&id=K4727050Y3
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