Molecular Heterogeneity of Astrocytes: Potential Implications for Development, Function and Therapeutics?

Astrocytes are the most numerous glial cell type in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS) and are essential for the formation and function of synapses. Once thought of as largely homogeneous, recent work indicates that astrocytes are actually a highly heterogeneous cell type (Batiuk et al., Nat Commun, 2020; Bayraktar et al., Nat Neurosci, 2020).

In this talk, I will discuss our transcriptomic data describing astrocyte specialization at the level of local neuronal circuits and present our current strategy of proximity biotinylation to access the underlying molecular architecture of astrocyte-neuron synaptic contacts. If time permits, I will also discuss how we have exploited transcriptomic insights into astrocyte state during injury and disease to develop next generation systems for CNS biologics delivery.