Comparison in the biological characteristics between primary cultured sensory and motor Schwann cells.

Schwann cells (SCs) express distinct sensory and motor phenotypes, which are associated with modality-specific promotion of axon growth. Here we compared cell proliferation and migration of primary cultured sensory and motor SCs and determined the mRNA expression of several genes, nap1l1, dok4, lpp, mmp-9 and l1cam, in two phenotypes of SCs. The results showed that the rate of cell proliferation or migration was higher in sensory SCs than in motor SCs, and the five proliferation or migration-related genes also had higher expression in sensory SCs than in motor SCs. These findings may provide a basis for deeply studying the biological differences between sensory and motor SCs.