How can I determine the purity of cells isolated from rat brains if I cannot use FACS, Immunohistochemistry or SEM anaysis?
You can do qPCR for certain markers from the extract. GFAP for astrocytes, Tuj1 for neurons, Myelin for oligodendrocytes etc and calculate their percentages to have an estimate of the relative populations. If you are quite used to microscopy and studying these cells then you can identify the different populations of cells with normal light microscopy as well; this is not quantitative and is susceptible to bias.