Persons affected with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) develop a wide range of neurological abnormalities including aberrant neuronal migration and seizures. In an effort to model TSC-associated central nervous system abnormalities in mice, we generated two independent lines of astrocyte-specific Tsc1 conditional knockout mice by using the Cre-LoxP system. Astrocyte-specific Tsc1-null mice exhi...

TNFalpha and IL-6 are cytokines of great interest, given the numerous biological activities and the documented expression in several central nervous system (CNS) pathologies. In this report, we have examined cultures of IL-1- or IL-1/IFNgamma-activated human fetal astrocytes as a model to study mechanisms of cytokine regulation in the inflamed CNS. Since one of the major functions of astrocytes...

VEGF treatment during status epilepticus alters long-term hippocampal astrocyte morphology: A detailed description of astrocyte morphology and glutamate transporter patterns with and without administration of VEGF and seizure induction

UNLABELLED Neuron-astrocyte interactions are critical for proper CNS development and function. Astrocytes secrete factors that are pivotal for synaptic development and function, neuronal metabolism, and neuronal survival. Our understanding of this relationship, however, remains incomplete due to technical hurdles that have prevented the removal of astrocytes from neuronal circuits without chang...

Here we investigate the role of hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)-2α in coordinating the development of retinal astrocytic and vascular networks. Three Cre mouse lines were used to disrupt floxed Hif-2α, including Rosa26(CreERT2), Tie2(Cre), and GFAP(Cre). Global Hif-2α disruption by Rosa26(CreERT2) led to reduced astrocytic and vascular development in neonatal retinas, whereas endothelial disrupt...

Diabetes exacerbates neuronal cell death induced by cerebral ischemia. One contributing factor is enhanced acidosis during ischemia. Astrocytes are vulnerable to hypoxia under acidic conditions in vitro and may be targets of ischemia under diabetic conditions. The objective of this study was to determine whether diabetes would cause damage to astrocytes after an ischemic brain injury in vivo. D...

Multipotent neural precursor cells (NPCs) generate astrocytes at late stages of mammalian neocortical development. Many signalling pathways that regulate astrocytogenesis directly induce the expression of GFAP, a marker of terminally differentiated astrocytes. However, astrocyte specification occurs before GFAP expression and essential factors for the specification step have remained elusive. H...

Intercellular calcium waves in central nervous system astrocyte networks underline the principle mechanism of cell signaling in astrocyte syncsytiums, which putatively contribute to the modulation of neuronal signaling and metabolic regulation. In support of carrying out systems level analyses of astrocyte networks, we have optimized and validated the converging squares image segmentation algor...

A coupled model containing two neurons and one astrocyte is constructed by integrating Hodgkin-Huxley neuronal model and Li-Rinzel calcium model. Based on this hybrid model, information transmission between neurons is studied numerically. Our results show that when the successive spikes are produced in neuron 1 (N1), the bursting-like spikes (BLSs) occur in two neurons simultaneously during the...