[Histonet] Tract tracing from cell bodies to dendrites

[Angelina Fong]

Hi everyone,

I am hoping some one will be able to help me and a friend in the lab ... 
here's the problem:

We are wanting to find the afferent origin for a bundle of nerves in 
reptiles.  We know the nerve have dendritic endings in the aorta and 
possibly pulmonary blood vessels in the thorax.  The cell bodies of 
these nerves resides in a number of large ganglia in the neck and their 
axon project to the brainstem.  However, we do not know the exact 
location of the dendritic ending in the blood vessels and would like to 
use tract tracing methods to find them.  At this point, we don't need to 
clearly differentiate between afferents and efferents, although if that 
is possible it would be great! Most tract tracers refer to the direction 
of travel between axon terminals and cell bodies, so here are our questions:

/Are there tract tracers that will travel towards the dendritic ends?  
/If so what would be the best tracers for this purpose?  We have tried 
DiI but it is very slow, so some thing with more active transport would 
be appreciated.  Will WGA or Dextran work for this?  We have had very 
little luck finding out about this direction of travel.

Or are there alternative ways we can identify connections between the 
nerves of interest and the blood vessels? Degeneration perhaps?

Thank you so much for any ideas any one can give us!!

Cheers
Angelina

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Angelina Y. Fong, Ph.D.
Department of Zoology
Biological Sciences Building
6270 University Boulevard
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4
Canada 

Ph:  (604) 822-5990
Fax: (604) 822-2416
Email: fong <@t> zoology.ubc.ca