Autoradiographic quantitation of β-adrenergic receptors on neural cells in primary cultures. 1

The current investigation was undertaken to determine whether the binding of [125I]pindolol (*IPIN) to immunocytochemically stained cultured cells, as measured by quantitative autoradiography, would fulfill the usual pharmacological criteria for specific β-adrenergic receptor binding. *IPIN binding experiments were carried out on individual astroglia obtained from neonatal rat cerebral cortex and grown as primary cultures on polylysine-coated glass slides. Autoradiographic silver grains on cells which stained for the intracellular astroglial marker, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), were quantified by a microcomputer-based video digitizing system. This study is a demonstration of receptor binding parameters derived from single cells in a known population, and represents a novel approach to the problem of assessing cell-type specific receptors on neural cells in mixed primary cultures. (Auth.)