Method for measuring gap junctional intercellular communication by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching

The present study was designed to establish a method for measuring cultured neuroglial gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) of rat cerebral cortices by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) analysis technique. As a result of the managements, such as cell culture, fluorescence staining, fluorescence excitement, laser scanning and computer analysis et al., fluorescence inside all selected cells recovered in different degrees, i.e., fluorescence relative intensities in the 1st-5th cell raised 14%, 28%, 43%, 17.5% and 12.5% respectively after scanning 15.4 min, the mean value of recovery was 18.57 +/- 10.06% and the mean rate of fluorescence recovery was 1.223 +/- 0.785%/min for three samples (n=14 cells). The result showed that the FRAP is an ideal method for measuring GJIC.