Can Once Neuronally Differentiated Cells of Neural Retina Be Lentoidogenic in Cell Culture?*: (neural retina/transdifferentiation/lens differentiation/merocyanine)

Abstract

Cells dissociated from neural retina of 3.5-day-old chick embryos transdifferentiated extensively into lens cells under the conditions of a cell culture for 3 to 4 weeks. In early satges of cell culture by about 10 days, cultures consisted of small round cells often with cytoplasmic processes(N-cells) and flattened epithelial cells (E-cells). Only N-cells were stained with a fluorescent dye Merocyanine 540. When cells harvested from early cultures were separated into two fractions by centrifugation in Percoll gradient, the specific activity of choline acetyltransferase was much higher in the fraction consisting mainly of N-cells than in other fraction mainly of E-cells. Continuous daily observations as well as cinematographic observations of living cultures indicate that lentoid bodies were often formed in the locations where clusters of N-cells had been found in early stages of culturing. The possibility of transdifferentiation of N-cell clusters into lentoid bodies is discussed.