Astrocytes development

Levison S.W. and Goldman, J.E., Both oligodendrocytes and astrocytes develop from progenitors in the subventricular zone of postnatal rat brain, Neuron, 10, 201,1993. 

Fawcett, J. W. and Housdon, E., The effects of protease inhibitors on axon growth through astrocytes, Development, 108, 59, 1990. 

Lillien, L.E., Sendtner, M., Rohrer, H., Hughes, S.M., Raff, M.C., 1988. Type-2 astrocyte development in rat brain cultures is initiated by a CNTF-like protein produced by type-1 astriKytes. Neuron 1 (6), 485-494. 

Lillien, L.E. and Raff, M.C. (1990) Differentiation signals in the CNS type-2 astrocyte development in vitro as a model system. Neuron 5 111-119. 

The receptor for CNTF has recently been cloned (Davis et al., 1991) and appears to be exclusively expressed in the nervous system and in skeletal muscle. In contrast to other known receptors, the receptor for CNTF is anchored to the plasma membrane by a glycosyl-phospha-tidylinositol linkage (Davis et al., 1991). Its primary structure is most similar to the IL-6 receptor. Furthermore, both CNTF and the structurally related leukemia-inhibitory factor (see above) use the IL-6 signal transducer gpl30 (Ip et al., 1992). These observations raise the possibility that the receptors for CNTF, leukemia-inhibitory factor and hematopoietic cytokines are able to interact with each other and to activate related signaling pathways in diverse cell types (Bazan, 1991 Davis and Yancopoulos, 1993). It has been shown by Lillien et al. (1990) that some biological functions of CNTF, e.g. induction of type-2 astrocyte development, require cooperation with as yet unknown ECM-associated molecule(s). 

Damage occurred most rapidly and most severely to thin neurites and neuronal cell bodies, while damage to astrocytes developed somewhat later, although both types of cells were irreversibly affected after 10 min in 0.2 mM or 20 min in 0.1 mM MMC. Following exposure to much lower concentrations (e.g., 0.01 mM) of MMC for 30-40 min, the progression of damage to the astrocytic membrane could be halted by placing the cells in normal culture media, after which a slow recovery to normal was observed. 

Neuronal cerebellar development Progression of astrocytic neoplasmas... 

Miller RH, David S, Patel R, Abney ER, Raff MC 1985 A quantitative immunohistochemical study of macroglial cell development in the rat optic nerve in vivo evidence for two distinct astrocyte lineages. Dev Biol 111 35-41... 

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