Glia/glial cells types

The cultures can either consist of one predominant neuronal cell type, a mixture of different neuronal populations, pure glial cells, or mixed neuronal-glial cultures. These characteristics make it possible to determine the specific sensitivity to chemical perturbation in different neuronal and glia cell types [31, 32], The presence of astrocytes is known to modify the neuronal response to toxicants and it has been identified as an important contributing factor to neurotoxicity [33]. Primary neuronal cultures are often used to investigate cellular mechanisms of toxicity observed after in vivo chemical exposure. 

The enzyme nitric oxide synthase (NOS), that produces NO and citrullin from arginine, occurs as several isoenzymes (Knowles et al., 1989). Type I NOS is a constitutive, calcium and calmodulin-dependent enzyme, present in neurons and, possibly, in glia. Type II NOS is calcium-independent and can be induced in macrophages and glial cells by exposure to bacterial lipopolysaccharide (Galea et al., 1992 Murphy et al., 1993). Type III NOS is the endothelial iso-enzyme. NOS-I, II and III are produced by diflferent genes (Bredt et al., 1991 Lamas et al., 1992 Xie et al., 1992 Lowenstein et al., 1992 Lyons et al. 1992 Ogura et al., 1993). NOS displays NADPH-dependent diaphorase... 

The protein kinase types a, ySll, j and C have been localized in Bergmann glia (Shimohama et al., 1990 Hidaka et al., 1988 Wetsel et al., 1992). Bergmann glial cells... 

A variety of human cells produce NO, but some cell types produce much more than others. In many cases the amount of NO produced by human blood M( ) is less than that produced by human glia. Both in the stimuli successfully used to induce NO and in the amount of NO produced, human glial cells and M( ) differ from these same cell types in the rodent. NO production by human blood Mc ) and glia is a more protracted process than it is in rodent cells, with the peak NO production taking 6-7 days in vitro. 

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