given the mesenchymal elements present in these tissues as well as in the primary olfactory cells whose axons contain vimentin although antibodies against gfap detect a band of appropriate mobility in olfactory bulb and olfactory epithelium no such band is seen upon incubation with olfactory cultured extracts while immunofluorescence fig3 i and j demonstrates the presence of occasional gfap positive cells levels of gfap are presumably too low to be detected by western blotting antibodies against s 100 protein recognize a band of appropriate molecular weight in olfactory bulb but not in olfactory epithelium or primary cultures nse immunoreactivity of appropriate molecular weight is evident in bulb olfactory epithelium and primary cultures antibodies against tubulin detect a doublet of appropriate molecular weight in all three tissues while non immune serum fails to identify the major band sin any of the three extracted tissues thus western blot analysis confirms the specificity of staining seen by immunocytochemistry of primary cultures of rat olfactory neurons this example describes the immunocytochemical characterization of cells removed from the primary cell cultures by filtration according to the method of the invention a procedure to prepare olfactory neurons from dissociated cells of olfactory mucosa includes entrapment of epithelial cells on a 50 microns filter just prior to plating perhaps due to differences in extracellular matrix components the epithelial cells which probably include epithelial and sustentacular cells remain associated or reassociate so that they are trapped by filtration some neurons are trapped as well epithelial cells generally appear flat and polygonal but after 5 7.