UIC Research Resources Center

SPOT^™ Culture Kit (Patent Pending)

The SPOT culture kit serves to prepare primary cultures of rodent hippocampal or cortical neurons from a cryopreserved preparation provided with the kit.

The kit will:

• Save time (You avoid time-consuming dissection and processing of brain tissue).
• Save money (You pay a fraction of the cost of time pregnant mice or rats).

The neurons prepared using the kit grow on an approximately 4 mm spot in the center of 35 mm plastic dishes or glass coverslips (Fig. 1 - Hippocampal neurons from E16 c57/bl/6 mice prepared using the SPOT culture kit at 9 day-in-vitro. Hoffman modulation contrast; bar = 500 µm). One kit suffices to prepare 25 - 30 such SPOT cultures. A much larger number of smaller SPOT cultures can be grown in 96-well plates.

The SPOT cultures are very suitable for experiments involving microscopic observations such as:

• Fluorescence microscopy
• Ca2+ (or other ion) imaging
• Electrophysiology
• Immunocytochemistry
• Lentiviral or plasmid transfection
• shRNAi-mediated gene knockdown
• Neuronal development
• Neuronal death

Currently in stock are cryopreserved preparations of hippocampal and cortical neurons from E16 C57BL/6 mice and E18 Sprague Dawley rats. Analogous preparations from different mouse strains, transgenic mice, or from other mouse or rat brain regions can be prepared and supplied on request.

Ordering the kit:

Orders (and inquiries) may be placed via e-mail spot@uic.edu (Cc: rfranks@uic.edu). An RRC Account Number must be included with each order. Customers from UIC will be notified by e-mail when their order is ready for pickup. To pick up the order, customers should bring a small styrofoam container with dry ice. External orders will be charged a shipping + handling fee.

* Prices are subject to change without notice.