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. 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.