Glial cells play a role in many important processes, though the mechanisms through which they affect neighboring are not fully known. Insights may be gained by selectively activating glial cell populations intact organisms utilizing activatable channel proteins rhodopsin (ChR2XXL) and TRPA1. Here, impacts of glial-specific expression these channels were examined both larval adult Drosophila. Th...

Enteric glia are neural crest derivatives. Kabouridis et al. (2015) now show in adult animals that new glia arise within the ganglia of enteric plexuses and then migrate centripetally to colonize the mucosa. Remarkably, enteric microbiota regulate this critical migration.

Glia cells are uniquely positioned at synapses, contacting pre- and post-synaptic terminals. At the Drosophila neuromuscular junction, a novel glia-derived TGF-β ligand has been found that modulates a retrograde synaptogenic signal.