Fig. 1

Immunolabeled LCM-astrocytes and housekeeping gene expression. a, b Example of immunostainings of T cells and astrocytes in white matter spinal cord (here ventrolateral part as in Fig. 3). CD3 was used to label T cells and identify immune T cell infiltrated zones (a) and GFAP to label astrocytes (a′, b, b′). b′ shows an example of an astrocyte drawing before cutting and catapulting. Scale bar a, a′ 70 μm; b, b′, 25 μm. c Analysis of the four housekeeping genes expressed in the LCM-dissected astrocyte control and EAE samples (n = 6, no differences between control and EAE samples were observed except that one of six cDNA samples did not give a signal for GADPH (1)). TUB1A1 (TUB) and PPIA probes gave the most robust signals; the geometric mean of these two reference genes was thus used for dCt calculations