A Molecular Switch for Neuroprotective Astrocyte Reactivity

Astrocytes differentiate into a spectrum of neurotoxic and neuroprotective reactive subpopulations after CNS injury and in disease. In astrocyte conditional ADCY10 (sAC) knockout mice, reactive astrocytes exhibit a shift towards neurotoxic phenotypes implicating sAC as a critical regulator of neuroprotective astrocyte differentiation. Overall design: To induce reactive astrocyte differentiation wildtype (BL6) and conditional astrocyte sAC KO mice were subjected to bilateral optic nerve crush. Optic nerves were collected and dissociated for single cell RNAseq analysis 3 and 7 days' post crush injury. Comparative gene expression analysis was performed on WT naïve (no crush), WT crushed, and sAC KO crushed samples.