EMBO J: Scientists have discovered an "alternate" mechanism in the brain that effectively removes harmful cell fragments

November 16, 2020 // -- Small glial cells, special immune cells in the brain, play a major role in removing cell fragments from the brain, a study published in the international journal The EMBO Journal found. Brain cells called astrogenic glial cells may also be involved in cleaning up brain cell fragments, a behavior that is thought to be a back-up force for small glial cells, and the findings could help scientists develop new therapies to speed up the removal of cell fragments in the brain and reduce the harmful effects of cell fragments/garbage on surrounding brain cells.
Photo Source: Hiroyuki Konish Dies at a Certain Rate as the body ages, even in a healthy brain, and as dead cells and cell fragments accumulate, it damages surrounding healthy cells, which in turn accelerates the death of neuron cells and induces nerves such as Alzheimer's disease Degenerative disease occurs as a type of cell in the brain that devours and absorbs bacteria and cell fragments, and small glial cells are able to take action to eliminate these dangers, but cell fragments sometimes drown small glial cells, which may suggest that scientists have a special mechanism to help remove such dangerous cell fragments.
In order to clarify the characteristics of this replaceable cell fragmentation mechanism, the researchers first investigated what happens to small glial cell fragments in the brains of mouse models where small glial cells are induced to die, and, as the researchers speculated, they observed that dead small glial cells were cleaned up, suggesting that there was indeed another cell fragmentation mechanism in the brain.
Then the researchers analyzed the expression of specific molecules in the brains of mouse models, and eventually identified that asater glial cells may play a key role in the clean-up of cell fragments in small glial cells, and when the researchers studied the mutant mouse models of small glial cells that carried phagocytostic damage, they analyzed small The mechanism by which astrogenic glial cells function properly suggests that nearly half of all cell fragments are swallowed up by as astroid glial cells , not small glial cells , suggesting that star-shaped glial cells may have the potential to compensate for abnormal functions of small glial cells .
Finally, the researchers concluded that this study not only reveals the ability of astrogenic glial cells to devour cell fragments, but also emphasizes that when small glial cells do not function properly, ascornstary glial cells can act as a back-up force to help clean up cell fragments that are harmful to the brain.
() Original source: Hiroyuki Konishi, Takayuki Okamoto, Yuichiro Hara, et al. Astrocytic phagocytosis is a compensatory mechanism for microglial dysfunction, The EMBO Journal (2020). DOI:10.15252/embj.2020104464