Fig. 9. Recombinant ephrin-A5 ligand elicits distinct guidance effects on non-limbic and limbic thalamic axons in stripe assay. Outgrowth of thalamic fibers from non-limbic (A,B) and limbic (C,D) thalamic explants (see Materials and Methods) confronted with parallel membrane stripes from NIH3T3-ephrin-A5 cells and from untransfected control cells. Upper panels: photomicrographs of representative examples of axonal outgrowth. Lower panels: quantitative analysis of axonal preference. The histograms depict the percentage of axons growing on ephrin-A5 containing stripes (black bars) and on control stripes (white bars). Non-limbic thalamic axons grow equally on both types of stripes, whereas limbic thalamic axons avoid ephrin-A5 ligand and prefer control stripes. Scale bar: 100 µm; n, number of pair of stripes examined.

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