STUDY OF THE NEURONAL CELLS ON THE MICROELECTRODE ARRAY MEA60PT BY THE ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPY (AFM)

The research on the nervous system is potentially important in order to understand the origin of neurological diseases. The use of the atomic force microscopy (AFM) in such complex biological system consisted from network of neuronal cells, offers a powerful tool to study cell morphology and mechanisms of the intercellular communication. Here, we present work on development of methodology for visualization and characterization of the neural network cell system, consisted from granular neurons of cerebellum (primary culture), based on the use of the AFM (Nanoscope III, Multimode). The primary cultures of neuronal cells were obtained from cerebellum of the Wistar rats. Furthermore, cells were placed to grow on a microelectrode array MEA60Pt, previously coated with poly-L-lysine/DMEM. This particular methodology turns to be very efficient for the cell growth and the AFM imaging [1-2]. The AFM visualization was carried in-situ (physiological medium) and after the cell immobilization treatment, by washing the microelectrode by the ethanol-water solution (70, 80 and 100 % ethanol). A successful visualization, so far, was achieved after immobilization (dehydration) process. The high-resolution AFM images clearly sho