Transplantation of normal embryonic cerebellar cell suspensions into the cerebellum of lurcher mutant mice.

Injection of cell suspensions of normal embryonic cerebellar tissue into adult and juvenile lurcher mutant mice results in infiltration of the atrophic host cerebellar cortex by genetically normal Purkinje cells, as has previously been observed in Purkinje cell degeneration (pcd) mutant mice. In lurcher, the grafted Purkinje neurons most frequently occupy the host molecular layer and produce axons which, in some cases, invade the host cerebellar nuclei. The grafted Purkinje neurons fail to adopt their characteristic planar dendritic disposition in lurcher hosts, probably because of the severe depletion of cerebellar granule neurons and parallel fibers in this mutant. Results reported previously in pcd mutants have thus been extended, with some deviations, to a similar but genetically distinct hereditary cerebellar atrophy, providing evidence of the generalized nature of the phenomena involved.