IUBio

Volume of neurons (striatum)

Richard Norman rsnorman at mediaone.net
Mon May 7 08:04:28 EST 2001


"Gunter Kuhnle" <gunter at elnhuk.de> wrote in message
news:slrn9fd2l2.bv2.gunter at pc039-034.phrt.umds.ac.uk...
> * Richard Norman <rsnorman at mediaone.net> wrote:
> >> Your question is not quite clear : do you talk about human striatum, or
> >> other species (cat's ?) ; of an adult , I presume ?
> >> Are you looking for the volume per cell (cell volume) or looking for
the
> >> total mass of  the corpus striatum (total number of cells in that
> >> structure?)
> >> The volume as such ? or the mass (in weight) ?
>
> I am looking for the (average) volume of a single neuron cell in human
> striatum.
>
> >I am also curious to know how you plan to use the volume of cells
> >to calculate concentrations.  What data do you already have and what
> >are you trying to do?  Apparently you have measured the quantity
> >(grams or moles) of some material taken from a brain sample and
> >want to calculate an appropriate concentration.  But what indication
> >do you have that the material you measured was specifically
> >restricted to the intracellular volume of striatum neurons, as
> >opposed to glia or trapped in the extracellular space?  Those
> >factors are critical in determining what volume to use.
>
> We didn't use brain but cell cultures to do our investigations. To get
> the amount of compound uptaken by the cells, the cells could be lysed
> with a certain amount of lysing buffer in which the compound
> concentration could be determined. Unfortunately, without knowing the
> cell volume it is impossible to obtain the concentration in cell.
>
> But for this reason, it es really only the volume inside the cells
> relevant for the calculation.
>

You could, of course, measure the size of the cells and calculate
a volume from that.  Or you could load them with, say, labeled K+
-- anything for which you could reasonable calculate or estimate
in intracellular concentration.  Then when you lyse them, the
concentration of labeled K+ in the lysate would give you the
information you need.







More information about the Neur-sci mailing list

Send comments to us at biosci-help [At] net.bio.net