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Histological identification of phrenic afferent projections to the spinal cord
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Histological identification of phrenic afferent projections to the spinal cord

Jayakrishnan Nair, Tatiana Bezdudnaya, Lyandysha V. Zholudeva, Megan R. Detloff, Paul J. Reier, Michael A. Lane and David D. Fuller
Respiratory physiology & neurobiology, v 236
Feb 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resp.2016.11.006
PMID: 27838334
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://europepmc.org/articles/pmc6126536View
Accepted (AM)Open Access (License Unspecified),  Open

Abstract

Afferent Cascade blue Cholera toxin Phrenic Spinal
•In adult rats the phrenic nerve was soaked in cholera toxin beta (CT-β) or Cascade Blue.•CT-β was also delivered intrapleurally or via direct diaphragm application.•Phrenic afferent labeling was verified via cervical dorsal root ganglia staining.•Phrenic afferent labeling was most effective with nerve soak.•Projections were prominent in laminae I–VII, X, and dorsal white matter. Limited data are available regarding the spinal projections of afferent fibers in the phrenic nerve. We describe a method that robustly labels phrenic afferent spinal projections in adult rats. The proximal end of the cut phrenic nerve was secured in a microtube filled with a transganglionic tracer (cholera toxin β-subunit, CT-β, or Cascade Blue) and tissues harvested 96-h later. Robust CT-β labeling occurred in C3-C5 dorsal root ganglia cell bodies and phrenic afferent projections were identified in the mid-cervical dorsal horn (laminae I–III), intermediate grey matter (laminae IV, VII) and near the central canal (laminae X). Afferent fiber labeling was reduced or absent when CT-β was delivered to the intrapleural space or directly to the hemidiaphragm. Soaking the phrenic nerve with Cascade Blue also produced robust labeling of mid-cervical dorsal root ganglia cells bodies, and primary afferent fibers were observed in spinal grey matter and dorsal white matter. Our results show that the ‘nerve soak’ method effectively labels both phrenic motoneurons and phrenic afferent projections, and show that primary afferents project throughout the ipsilateral mid-cervical gray matter.

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19 citations in Web of Science
20 citations in Scopus

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Physiology
Respiratory System
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