Astrocyte heterogeneity reveals region-specific astrogenesis in the white matter

Bocchi, Riccardo ; Thorwirth, Manja ; Simon-Ebert, Tatiana; Koupourtidou, Christina ; Clavreul, Solène ; Kolf, Keegan ; Della Vecchia, Patrizia ; Bottes, Sara; Jessberger, Sebastian ; Zhou, Jiafeng ; Wani, Gulzar ; Pilz, Gregor-Alexander ; Ninkovic, Jovica ; Buffo, Annalisa ; Sirko, Swetlana ; Götz, Magdalena und Fischer-Sternjak, Judith (2025): Astrocyte heterogeneity reveals region-specific astrogenesis in the white matter. In: Nature Neuroscience, Bd. 28: S. 457-469

Abstract

Astrocyte heterogeneity has been well explored, but our understanding of white matter (WM) astrocytes and their distinctions from gray matter (GM) astrocytes remains limited. Here, we compared astrocytes from cortical GM and WM/corpus callosum (WM/CC) using single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics of the murine forebrain. The comparison revealed similarities but also significant differences between WM and GM astrocytes, including cytoskeletal and metabolic hallmarks specific to WM astrocytes with molecular properties also shared with human WM astrocytes. When we compared murine astrocytes from two different WM regions, the cortex and cerebellum, we found that they exhibited distinct, region-specific molecular properties, with the cerebellum lacking, for example, a specific cluster of WM astrocytes expressing progenitor and proliferation genes. Functional experiments confirmed astrocyte proliferation in the WM/CC, but not in the cerebellar WM, suggesting that the WM/CC may be a source of continued astrogenesis.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Medizin ; Medizin > Anatomische Anstalt ; Medizin > Physiologisches Institut ; Medizin > Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology (SyNergy)
• Themengebiete: 600 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften > 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
• ISSN: 1097-6256
• Sprache: Englisch
• DFG: Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - 390857198