Trends in Neurosciences
Volume 26, Issue 11, November 2003, Pages 597-603
Journal home page for Trends in Neurosciences

New roles for astrocytes: The nightlife of an ‘astrocyte’. La vida loca!

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2003.09.010Get rights and content

Abstract

Like a newly popular nightspot, the biology of adult stem cells has emerged from obscurity to become one of the most lively new disciplines of the decade. The neurosciences have not escaped this trendy pastime and, from amid the noise and excitement, the astrocyte emerges as a beguiling companion to the adult neural stem cell. A once receding partner to neurons and oligodendrocytes, the astrocyte even takes on an alter ego of the stem cell itself (S. Goldman, this issue of TINS). Putting ego aside, the ‘astrocyte’ is also (and perhaps more importantly) an integral component of neural progenitor hotspots, where the craziness or ‘la vida loca’ of the nightlife might not be so wild when compared with our traditional understanding of the astrocyte. Here, astrocytes contribute to the instructive confluence of location, atmosphere and cellular neighbors that define the daily ‘vida local’ or everyday local life of an adult stem cell. This review discusses astrocytes as influential components in the local stem cell niche.

Section snippets

Persistent and prevalent gliogenesis in the adult CNS

Continuing gliogenesis in the adult has been documented and accepted since the 1960s 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 but there are differences between development and the adult that are noteworthy. During the transition from birth to adulthood, there is an attenuation of progenitor proliferation and migration and the vast majority of glia produced in adulthood are oligodendrocytes 19, 30, 31, 32. In addition, adult gliogenesis becomes primarily a local phenomenon (rather than via migration of progenitors

Gliogenesis and neurogenesis: intrinsic versus environmental control of stem cell fate

Unlike the abundant and widespread production of oligodendrocytes, neurogenesis in the naı̈ve rodent brain is restricted to the hippocampus and olfactory bulb. The actively dividing precursors that produce glia are antigenically distinct from those that generate neurons and this lineage dichotomy is established well before stem cell progeny acquire the lineage-specific markers of myelin basic protein, GFAP or type III β-tubulin [14]. This suggests that commitment to an eventual fate begins

Summary

Control by local stem and/or progenitor cells is influenced by factors that are expressed by many cell types present within the niche consisting of progenitor cells, mature oligodendrocytes and neurons, as well as astrocytes and cells of the vasculature. Although factors provided by mature astrocytes are at least a part of the equation and glia are clearly involved in cell fate, the roles of the astrocyte in cell genesis are diverse (Table 1) and the exact role of astrocytes in the instructive

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