Fig. 7. Comparison of the proportions of oligodendrocytes, OPCs and astrocytes in the P7 optic nerve of p53^+/+ and p53^-/- mice. P7 optic nerve cells were isolated, counted and cultured on PDL-coated coverslips for 3-4 hours. The cells were then fixed and stained for GC to identify oligodendrocytes (A), for NG2 to identify OPCs (B) or for GFAP to identify astrocytes (C). Between 5 and 15 pups were analysed for each genotype. Each pair of optic nerves was processed separately, and 2 coverslips were counted for each pair. The total number of cells isolated per nerve was not significantly different in the two genotypes (not shown). The results are expressed as the mean±s.e.m. The differences between the p53^+/+ and p53^-/- results in Fig. 7A and 7B are statistically significant when analysed by Student's t-test (p=0.02 and 0.04, respectively).