德国生理基因组学主席Judith Fischer-Sternjak研究团队报道了星形胶质细胞的异质性揭示了白质中特定区域的星形胶质细胞发生。2025年2月24日，国际知名学术期刊《自然—神经科学》发表了这一成果。

小组比较了来自皮质GM和WM/corpthem callosum （WM/CC）的星形胶质细胞的单细胞RNA测序和空间转录组学。比较发现WM和转基因星形胶质细胞之间既有相似之处，也有显著差异，包括WM星形胶质细胞特有的细胞骨架和代谢特征，其分子特性也与人类WM星形胶质细胞相同。当课题组人员比较来自两个不同WM区域（皮层和小脑）的小鼠星形胶质细胞时，课题组人员发现它们表现出不同的区域特异性分子特性，例如，小脑缺乏表达祖基因和增殖基因的WM星形胶质细胞的特异性细胞。功能实验证实了WM/CC中星形胶质细胞的增殖，但在小脑WM中没有，提示WM/CC可能是持续星形胶质细胞发生的一个原因。

据了解，星形胶质细胞的异质性已经得到了很好的探索，但他们对白质（WM）星形胶质细胞及其与灰质（GM）星形胶质细胞的区别的了解仍然有限。

附：英文原文

Title: Astrocyte heterogeneity reveals region-specific astrogenesis in the white matter

Author: Bocchi, Riccardo, Thorwirth, Manja, Simon-Ebert, Tatiana, Koupourtidou, Christina, Clavreul, Solne, Kolf, Keegan, Della Vecchia, Patrizia, Bottes, Sara, Jessberger, Sebastian, Zhou, Jiafeng, Wani, Gulzar, Pilz, Gregor-Alexander, Ninkovic, Jovica, Buffo, Annalisa, Sirko, Swetlana, Gtz, Magdalena, Fischer-Sternjak, Judith

Issue&Volume: 2025-02-24

Abstract: Astrocyte heterogeneity has been well explored, but our understanding of white matter (WM) astrocytes and their distinctions from gray matter (GM) astrocytes remains limited. Here, we compared astrocytes from cortical GM and WM/corpus callosum (WM/CC) using single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics of the murine forebrain. The comparison revealed similarities but also significant differences between WM and GM astrocytes, including cytoskeletal and metabolic hallmarks specific to WM astrocytes with molecular properties also shared with human WM astrocytes. When we compared murine astrocytes from two different WM regions, the cortex and cerebellum, we found that they exhibited distinct, region-specific molecular properties, with the cerebellum lacking, for example, a specific cluster of WM astrocytes expressing progenitor and proliferation genes. Functional experiments confirmed astrocyte proliferation in the WM/CC, but not in the cerebellar WM, suggesting that the WM/CC may be a source of continued astrogenesis.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-025-01878-6

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-01878-6