[DIYbio] Re: Where to buy nerve tissue?

Here is a great review on choosing an appropriate strategy for co-culturing your cells. Nathan's suggestion of using CytoVu is excellent if you can afford it.

If you'll be co-culturing, my suggestion on animal brains is mostly out, as they will only act as a nutrient medium, and won't help much with your work if you intend to study cell-cell interaction/work on proteomics in the context of nervous tissue. The alternative is you sit with a butcher as they do their business -- not a particularly enticing prospect. Even if you do go ahead with the latter, keep in mind that culturing non-foetal neural cells are notoriously difficult, though you may have more luck with glia. Here is a protocol on culturing neural cells but I have never tested it and can't vouch for it. Here is a protocol for Schwann cells (haven't worked with them either).

Human peripheral nerve tissue will be pretty hard (if not nearly impossible) to find. You'll get cell lines easily enough (recommended). They will be expensive, though. Here are some links:

ThermoFisher
SigmaAldrich

All of these considerations will affect your model.

Do note that you'll need to maintain sterile conditions etc. Contamination will wreak havoc with your experiment.


On Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at 5:58:32 AM UTC+5:30, coolcash2004 wrote:

I'm trying to culture persister borrelia on peripheral nerve tissue so that I can submit the bacteria cells for proteomics analysis.

On Monday, January 25, 2016 at 8:48:22 AM UTC-5, Reshma Bhatnagar wrote:

"I'm trying to adapt an existing procedure for culturing bacteria to instead culture the bacteria on nerve tissue"

Why are you trying to grow bacteria on nerve tissue? Seems wasteful and expensive. If culturing bacteria is your concern, there are several media that can be used and are widely available. At the end of the day, the nutritional requirements of the bacteria need to be met in order to culture them, and I don't see any special reason to use nerve tissue to culture any bacteria.

What is the goal for culturing your bacteria?

If you are attempting to do so to explore treatments of bacterial infections that affect the brain by culturing bacteria on nerve tissue and using drugs to kill the bacteria, the attempt would be meaningless because:

1. Both need to pass the blood brain barrier in living organisms
2. Antibiotics have been well studied anyway
3. Organisms may be resistant to the antibiotics you test

If you want to go ahead anyway, I suggest buying offal/animal brains from a butcher. I will however, reiterate that it seems pointless. Perhaps, if you could outline what you propose to do, I can come up with a more helpful reply.

On Monday, January 25, 2016 at 6:11:57 AM UTC+5:30, coolcash2004 wrote:

Anyone have experience working with nerve tissue?  Where can you buy it?  Any major challenges I should be aware of?  I'm trying to adapt an existing procedure for culturing bacteria to instead culture the bacteria on nerve tissue.  Thanks again,