Astrocytes Control Synapse Formation, Function, and Elimination

By Won-Suk Chung, N. J. Allen, C. Eroglu. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology, 2015

745 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Astrocytes, through their close associations with synapses, can monitor and alter synaptic function, thus actively controlling synaptic transmission in the adult brain. Besides their important role at adult synapses, in the last three decades a number of critical findings have highlighted the importance of astrocytes in the establishment of synaptic connectivity in the developing brain. In this article, we will review the key findings on astrocytic control of synapse formation, function, and elimination. First, we will summarize our current structural and functional understanding of astrocytes at the synapse. Then, we will discuss the cellular and molecular mechanisms through which developing and mature astrocytes instruct the formation, maturation, and refinement of synapses. Our aim is to provide an overview of astrocytes as important players in the establishment of a functional nervous system.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Developmental Neuroscience, Neurology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/70c917f5b95428566eff97f21fb7bea224974c8d

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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

In Developmental Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

Astrocyte crosstalk in CNS inflammation (2020, background): “Furthermore, astrocytes secrete neurotrophic factors to regulate synaptogenesis, neuronal differentiation, and neuronal survival (Allen et al., 2012b; Christopherson et al., 2005; Chung et al., 2015; Molofsky et al., 2014; Wheeler and Quintana, 2019).”
Purification and characterization of progenitor and mature human astrocytes reveals transcriptional and functional differences with mouse (2015, neutral): “They obtained transcriptome profiles of purified human CNS cell types and discovered two distinct stages of human astrocyte development.”
Multi-sensory gamma stimulation ameliorates Alzheimer’s-associated pathology and improves cognition. (2019, background): “Astrocytes are another primary glial cell in the CNS and are critical for many important biological processes including waste clearance (Chung et al., 2015; Kisler et al., 2017).”