Astrocytes play a key role in Drosophila mushroom body axon pruning.

ABSTRACT: Axon pruning is an evolutionarily conserved strategy used to remodel neuronal connections during development. The Drosophila mushroom body (MB) undergoes neuronal remodeling in a highly stereotypical and tightly regulated manner, however many open questions remain. Although it has been previously shown that glia instruct pruning by secreting a TGF-β ligand, myoglianin, which primes MB neurons for fragmentation and also later engulf the axonal debris once fragmentation has been completed, which glia subtypes participate in these processes as well as the molecular details are unknown. Here we show that, unexpectedly, astrocytes are the major glial subtype that is responsible for the clearance of MB axon debris following fragmentation, even though they represent only a minority of glia in the

SUBMITTER: Hakim Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3897647 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature