GFAP

Human GFAP is a 49,749 dalton protein (432 amino acids) expressed in astrocytes. GFAP is an intermediate filament protein and acts as an intracellular structural component of the cytoskeleton. During embryonic and fetal life, GFAP is also expressed by radial glial cells of the CNS. Various mutations of the GFAP gene in humans produce Alexander's disease, one of the leukodystrophies.

Antibodies to GFAP are therefore very useful as markers of astrocytic cells and neural stem cells. In addition many types of brain tumor, presumably derived from astrocytic cells, heavily express GFAP.

Image: Mixed neuron-glial cultures stained with rabbit GFAP (red channel) and chicken vimentin (green channel). The fibroblastic cells contain only vimentin and so are green, while astrocytes contain either vimentin and GFAP, so appearing golden, or predominantly GFAP, in which case they appear red. Blue is nuclear DNA stain. Protocol on data-sheet

GFAP: Customer Publications 

Image: Injection of rhHsp70 did not result in overt changes in glial cell activation. Lumbar spinal cord tissue was collected from treated and untreated G93A SOD1 or WT mice on P90. Twenty-five micrograms of protein per lane was loaded into each lane and Western blotting was performed to assess relative levels of GFAP and Iba1. When normalized to actin, quantification of the bands confirmed no change in expression (data not shown). doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4057-07.2007