Subpopulations of cultured chick sympathetic neurones differ in their requirements for survival factors

Peripheral autonomic and sensory neurones derived from the neural crest will survive in vitro only if the culture medium is supplemented with specific factors (for review see ref. 1). For example, the nerve growth factor (NGF), although supporting the survival of sympathetic and spinal sensory neurons, is ineffective on parasympathetic neurones, whereas medium conditioned by chick heart cells (HCM) supports the survival of all three neuronal types. We showed previously that the requirements of cultured spinal sensory ganglion neurones for survival factors changed during development, and so provided a basis for the classification of such factors. We now demonstrate that cultured post-mitotic neurones from chick paravertebral sympathetic ganglia respond differentially to NGF, HCM and medium conditioned by C6 glioma cells (GCM). Thus, there three survival factors are functionally distinct in that they support the survival in culture of discrete subpopulations of sympathetic neurones. Those subpopulations responding to HCM and NGF are shown to differ not only in their requirements for survival factors but also in their contents of the cholinergic and adrenergic marker enzymes choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH).