Primary osteocyte isolation is a lengthy procedure that often leaves out in low cell areas. This protocol provides efficient methods for isolating high numbers of primary GFP-expressing osteocytes. This protocol reduces the handling time and allows a higher number of osteocytes to be obtained in a single procedure with minimal contamination from hematopoietic or mesenchymal cells.
For the isolation of GFP-expressing osteocytes, place euthanized, postnatal day six to seven, transgenic mouse pups into a non-treated culture dish, and use scissors and tweezers to grasp the skin at the base of one's skull. Use the scissors to make an initial incision in the lifted skin, followed by cuts along both sides of the skull in front of the ears. Remove the skin to expose the calvaria and holding the head from the nasal bridge, cut the calvaria along the lamboid suture and along the edges of the parietal bones to the frontal part of the tissue.
Separate the calvaria from the underlying brain tissue and place the bones concave side up in PBS. To obtain fraction one, pool up to five calvaria per 50-milliliter tube in five milliliters of freshly prepared two-milligram per milliliter collagenase, and incubate the tissues at 37 degrees Celsius and 300 revolutions per minute for 20 minutes. At the end of the incubation, discard the digest from fraction one and wash the calvaria with five milliliters of PBS.
Replace the wash with five milliliters of five-millimolar EDTA supplemented with one milligram per milliliter of bovine serum albumin in PBS for 15 minutes at 37 degrees Celsius with shaking. At the end of the incubation, transfer the digest to a 50-milliliter conical tube and wash the calveria with five milliliters of PBS. Then transfer the wash solution to the digest.
To obtain fraction two, place the digest for centrifugation and discard the supernatant. Re-suspend the pellet in eight milliliters of alpha minimum essential medium containing 10%fetal bovine serum, or FBS, and antibiotics, and seed the cells onto a 10-centimeter culture dish. Then place the fraction two cells into the cell culture incubator.
After collecting and culturing fractions three and four as just demonstrated. Incubate the calveria in five milliliters of five-millimolar EDTA supplemented with one milligram per milliliter of bovine serum albumin in PBS for 15 minutes at 37 degrees Celsius with shaking. At the end of the incubation, collect and culture fraction five as demonstrated for fractions two, three, and four.
Immediately after fractionation, collect the cells for sorting. Alternatively, collect the cells after 24 hours of culture by aspirating the medium and gently wash the cells two times with 10 milliliters of PBS per dish per wash. After the second wash, treat the cells with five milliliters of 0.5%tripsin EDTA in PBS per plate.
After five minutes at 37 degrees Celsius, add five milliliters of complete alpha minimum essential medium to each plate and gently detach the cells with pipetting. To combine the cells in each fraction, filter the cell suspensions through a 40-micron cell strainer into a single 50-milliliter conical centrifuge tube. After washing the cells with 10 milliliters of PBS, add them to the tube.
Filter the cells through a strainer and collect the cells by centrifugation. Once the cells are pelleted down, re-suspend the pellet in complete minimal essential medium to a one times 10 to the seventh cells per milliliter of medium concentration and filter the cells through a 35-micron nylon mesh capped tube. To test the efficiency of this method, fractions were separately sorted and cultured for 24 hours to determine the percentage and yield of osteocytes from each fraction.
The density of the osteocytes in fractions two to five were higher than that observed for fraction one and decreased remarkably in fractions six, seven, and eight. Although the percentage of osteocytes obtained between all of the fractions is not statistically significant, the density of the osteocytes differs dramatically between fractions. Here the gating strategy for isolating GFP-positive osteocytes from their GFP-negative counterparts by fluorescence-activated cell sorting is shown.
After sorting, osteocytes can be analyzed for the expression of osteocyte markers of interest. In this analysis, the osteocyte marker genes were expressed at higher levels in the isolated GFP-positive osteocytes compared to presort fraction two, which is known as a high osteoblast fraction. Here the morphology of a GFP-positive osteocyte retaining a stellate shape with dendrites extending from the cell body after 24 hours of culture on a plastic culture dish, post sort, can be observed.
Pay attention when aspirating the digests as the calveria will be reduced to minute pellets. Remember to use a small tip aspirator to avoid cell loss. Osteocytes have been enigmatic because they are entombed in bone.
This technique has paved the way to studying osteocyte molecular interactions and their control over osteoclasts and osteoblasts.
