I have no other astrocyte markers that GFAP, but I am being required for an additional one because "GFAP is a promiscuous antibody". However, I have SR101 and I'd like to know if that would be an acceptable control to identify astrocytes in cell culture.
Depends on the other cells in the culture. This paper reports that SR101 stains oligodendrocytes as well. http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v11/n11/full/nmeth.3140.html
If you are not co-culturing oligodendrocytes with your astrocytes, it should be a good positive stain for astrocytes vs. neurons, epithelial, etc... But if you are trying to prove that you have exclusively cultured astrocytes from a tissue digestion that included oligodendrocytes you wont be able to use that stain as definitive positive.
Thanks for the response and the reference Ron, I did not know it.
Hi Pavel,
I doubt that SR101 will be accepted as astrocytic marker in cultures by majority of reviewers. If you would like to invest in an additional marker that has solid reputation, I recommend to buy the anti-Aldh1L1 antibody (anti-Aldehyde dehydrogenase family 1 member L1). Several companies sell them nowadays, including AbCam, Sigma, and NeuroMab to name a few. We've tried polyclonal form AbCome. It worked great for Western blotting, and was OK but not great for immunocytochemistry.
Hope it helps.
AM
Thanks Alexander, I will have that in mind , at the end we used Glu synthetase as a marker.
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