Establishment of research platform to study glial contribution to neuronal dendritic development

Abstract

Glia are increasingly regarded to play an active role in the nervous system and no longer viewed as mere providers of passive and supportive responses to neurons. Glia contribute to nervous system both directly, by wrapping the axon of neurons, and indirectly, by regulating surrounding environment. While the glial effect on axonal development or maintenance is well studied, less is known about glial contribution to neuronal dendrites. Herein, I showed that the development of stereotypical neuronal dendrites depends on the existence of healthy and morphologically stable glia. I established an applied research platform using existing methods. Because of the diffi-culty to study the effects of non-cell autonomous influences in other model systems, I made the best use of the advantages of Drosophila model system. An independent enhancer-driven cellular marker allows to observe the alterations of neurons when glia are specifically manipu-lated. Furthermore, caspase-LOV system enable to control the degeneration process spatio-temporally in Drosophila. Taken together, the results show the diverse possibilities of glia contribution to neuronal dendrites