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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: Dev Biol. 2021 Jul 11;478:144–154. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2021.07.007

Figure 4: Cell-cell interactions of retinal astrocytes.

Figure 4:

A,B) Interactions with axons (labeled by anti-Neurofilament medium chain).

At P1 (A), astrocyte precursor cells climb along RGC axons as they migrate towards peripheral retina. Note polarization of astrocyte arbors (revealed by Pax2-Cre-driven membrane-GFP reporter) along the axon bundles.

At P14 (B), mature astrocytes are no longer closely associated with RGC axons, instead showing uniform “mosaic” spacing. Astrocyte arbors labeled by anti-GFAP. See O’Sullivan et al. (2017) for further details on astrocyte-axon interactions during migration.

C) Interactions with microglia. At P5, astrocyte debris (arrows) can be found within microglia. Astrocytes were labeled with GFAP-Cre-driven TdTomato reporter; microglia were labeled with a combination of antibodies to Iba1 and P2Y12. At this age, GFAP-Cre is selective for astrocytes and not yet expressed by Müller glia.

Scale bars: 25μm (A,B), 10μm (C). (C) modified from Puñal et al. (2019).