Heterogeneity and Development of Fine Astrocyte Morphology Captured by Diffraction-Limited Microscopy
The fine processes of single astrocytes can contact many thousands of synapses whose function they can modulate through bi-directional signaling. The spatial arrangement of astrocytic processes and neuronal structures is relevant for such interactions and for the support of neuronal signaling by ast...
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Published in | Frontiers in cellular neuroscience Vol. 15; p. 669280 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Lausanne
Frontiers Research Foundation
04.06.2021
Frontiers Media S.A |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The fine processes of single astrocytes can contact many thousands of synapses whose function they can modulate through bi-directional signaling. The spatial arrangement of astrocytic processes and neuronal structures is relevant for such interactions and for the support of neuronal signaling by astrocytes. At the same time, the geometry of perisynaptic astrocyte processes is variable and dynamically regulated. Studying these fine astrocyte processes represents a technical challenge, because many of them cannot be fully resolved by diffraction-limited microscopy. Therefore, we have established two indirect parameters of astrocyte morphology, which, while not fully resolving local geometry by design, provide statistical measures of astrocyte morphology: the fraction of tissue volume that astrocytes occupy and the density of resolvable astrocytic processes. Both are straightforward to obtain using widely available microscopy techniques. We here present the approach and demonstrate its robustness across various experimental conditions using mainly two-photon excitation fluorescence microscopy in acute slices and
in vivo
as well as modeling. Using these indirect measures allowed us to analyze the morphology of relatively large populations of astrocytes. Doing so we captured the heterogeneity of astrocytes within and between the layers of the hippocampal CA1 region and the developmental profile of astrocyte morphology. This demonstrates that volume fraction (VF) and segment density are useful parameters for describing the structure of astrocytes. They are also suitable for online monitoring of astrocyte morphology with widely available microscopy techniques. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Edited by: Christian Lohr, University of Hamburg, Germany Reviewed by: Mutsuo Nuriya, Keio University School of Medicine, Japan; João Filipe Oliveira, University of Minho, Portugal Specialty section: This article was submitted to Non-Neuronal Cells, a section of the journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience |
ISSN: | 1662-5102 1662-5102 |
DOI: | 10.3389/fncel.2021.669280 |