Growth Mechanism of Rat Dorsal Root Ganglion Neurons on Slope Substrate

Neural response to topography depends on the dimensions and shapes of physical features. Most researchers focused on fabricating different grooves and ridges to study cell adhesion, spreading, alignment, and morphological changes. Very few papers report about how sloped substrate influences the behavior of neural cells. In this paper, we made a preliminary experiment to test the reaction of neuronal growth processes to different slopes. We found that all DRG cells’ axons couldn’t grow across 90 degree slope with 198 μm height. A few axons grew across 90 degree slope with 50 μm height. In addition, we also found that DRG cells showed preference to grow uphill rather than downhill. In future, we will make more detailed experiments to study the mechanism of slope modulation. This study will be helpful for the construction of nerve regenerating scaffolds and neural interface.

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