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Astrocytes are the largest and most prevalent type of glial cell in the central nervous system. Astrocytes contribute to formation of the blood–brain barrier, participate in the maintenance of extracellular ionic and chemical homeostasis, are involved in the response to injury, and affect neuronal development and plasticity.
Emotional experience evokes signalling in astrocytes, which form an ensemble that is reinforced by secondary astrocytic state changes resulting from repeated experience, leading to memory stabilization.
Aging drives distinct molecular changes in the brain. Here, the authors use scRNAseq and MERFISH and find that in mice, aging induces subtype-specific, regionally biased changes in striatal astrocytes, marked by transcriptional repression, inflammation, and impaired neuronal interactions.
Lead exposure induces depression-like behaviour in mice via astrocyte ferroptosis. Pb binds HIF-1α, preventing degradation and promoting VDAC1- mediated mitochondrial dysfunction, revealing a novel HIF-1α/VDAC1 axis in Pb neurotoxicity.
Rabah et al. elegantly show that, in Drosophila, astrocytes signal to neurons with hydrogen peroxide to encode memories. This redox-based communication is disrupted by amyloid-β, a mechanism that potentially underlies cognitive deficits in Alzheimer’s disease.
Most astrocytes in the mouse brain have a primary cilium that transduces local cues to drive distinct astrocytic transcriptomic programmes that determine regional astrocytic subtypes, and, in turn, shape local circuits and influence behaviour.
