Morphological comparison of astrocytes in the lamina cribrosa and glial lamina.

Purpose: Although the mechanisms underlying glaucomatous neurodegeneration are not yet well understood, cellular and small animal models suggest that LC astrocytes undergo early morphologic and functional changes, indicating their role as early responders to glaucomatous stress. These models, however, lack the LC found in larger animals and humans, leaving the morphology of LC astrocytes and their role in glaucoma initiation underexplored. In this work, we aimed to characterize the morphology of LC astrocytes and determine differences and similarities with astrocytes in the mouse glial lamina (GL), the analogous structure in a prominent glaucoma model.

Phenotype Distinctions in Mice Deficient in the Neuron-Specific α3 Subunit of Na,K-ATPase: 3 and .

is a Na,K-ATPase gene expressed specifically in neurons in the brain. Human mutations are dominant and produce an unusually wide spectrum of neurological phenotypes, most notably rapid-onset dystonia parkinsonism (RDP) and alternating hemiplegia of childhood (AHC). Here we compared heterozygotes of two mouse lines, a line with little or no expression (3) and a knock-in expressing p.

Astrocytes in the Optic Nerve Are Heterogeneous in Their Reactivity to Glaucomatous Injury.

The optic nerve head is thought to be the site of initial injury to retinal ganglion cell injury in glaucoma. In the initial segment of the optic nerve directly behind the globe, the ganglion cell axons are unmyelinated and come into direct contact to astrocytes, suggesting that astrocytes may play a role in the pathology of glaucoma. As in other parts of the CNS, optic nerve head astrocytes respond to injury by characteristic changes in cell morphology and gene expression profile.