Bribián A, Figueres-Oñate M, Martín-López E, López-Mascaraque L
Instituto Cajal-CSIC, Madrid, Spain.
Instituto Cajal-CSIC, Madrid, Spain.
Neuroscience. 2016 May 26;323:10-9. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2015.04.036. Epub 2015 Apr 25.
The importance of astrocyte heterogeneity came out as a hot topic in neurosciences especially over the last decades, when the development of new methodologies allowed demonstrating the existence of big differences in morphological, neurochemical and physiological features between astrocytes. However, although the knowledge about the biology of astrocytes is increasing rapidly, an important characteristic that remained unexplored, until the last years, has been the relationship between astrocyte lineages and cell heterogeneity. To fill this gap, a new method called StarTrack was recently developed, a powerful genetic tool that allows tracking astrocyte lineages forming cell clones. Using StarTrack, a single astrocyte progenitor and its progeny can be specifically labeled from its generation, during embryonic development, to its final fate in the adult brain. Because of this specific labeling, astrocyte clones, exhibiting heterogeneous morphologies and features, can be easily analyzed in relation to their ontogenetic origin. This review summarizes how astrocyte heterogeneity can be decoded studying the embryonic development of astrocyte lineages and their clonal relationship. Finally, we discuss about some of the challenges and opportunities emerging in this exciting area of investigation.
星形胶质细胞异质性的重要性成为神经科学领域的一个热门话题，尤其是在过去几十年中，新方法的发展使得人们能够证明星形胶质细胞在形态、神经化学和生理特征上存在巨大差异。然而，尽管关于星形胶质细胞生物学的知识正在迅速增加，但直到最近几年，一个尚未被探索的重要特征一直是星形胶质细胞谱系与细胞异质性之间的关系。为了填补这一空白，最近开发了一种名为StarTrack的新方法，这是一种强大的遗传工具，能够追踪形成细胞克隆的星形胶质细胞谱系。使用StarTrack，可以从胚胎发育期间单个星形胶质细胞祖细胞的产生开始，对其及其后代进行特异性标记，直至其在成体大脑中的最终命运。由于这种特异性标记，可以很容易地根据其个体发生起源来分析表现出异质形态和特征的星形胶质细胞克隆。这篇综述总结了如何通过研究星形胶质细胞谱系的胚胎发育及其克隆关系来解读星形胶质细胞的异质性。最后，我们讨论了在这个令人兴奋的研究领域中出现的一些挑战和机遇。
