During development glial cells and neurons must come together to make a partnership that is necessary for a healthy properly functioning central nervous system. Glial cells have elaborate morphologies that facilitate their ability to make these precise contacts with specific partner neurons. A major point of glial-neuronal contact is at the synapse, where neuronal pre- and post-synaptic terminals are ensheathed by a glial projection to form a functional compartment. Glial projections provide support to their synaptic partners by expressing specific molecules necessary for energy metabolism, neurotransmitter recycling and ion homeostasis. Altered glial morphology is a common pathological feature of most neurological disorders. Despite their importance, it is not known how glial cells establish their morphology and precise synaptic contacts during development.

We use the zebrafish retina as a model as it contains the same neuron types and glial cells as the human eye. The zebrafish embryo is an incredible system to study development – it is transparent, we can label each cell with specific fluorescent markers and use time-lapse confocal microscopy to watch eye development happen in real time in a living fish. In addition to imaging we use CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis, RNA-sequencing and molecular biology to uncover and explore fundamental mechanisms of glial biology. See below for more information on the specific projects carried out by each member of the team.

People working on this

Relevant literature

Kugler E, Bravo I, Durmishi X, Marcotti S, Beqiri S, Carrington A, Stramer BM, Mattar P, MacDonald RB. 2023. GliaMorph: A modular image analysis toolkit to quantify Müller glial cell morphology. Development: 150(3):dev201008. https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.201008

Charlton-Perkins M, Almeida AA, MacDonald RB* and Harris WA*. 2019. Genetic control of cellular morphogenesis in Müller glia. Glia 35(7):1225-1227. *Co-senior corresponding author. § Cover Article. https://doi.org/10.1002/glia.23615

MacDonald RB, Randlett OR, Oswald J, Yoshimatsu T, Franze K, and Harris WA. 2015. Müller glial cells provide essential tensile strength to the developing retina. Journal of Cell Biology. 210(7): 1075-1083. §Cover article. *Highlighted in the JCB Special Issue 2016. https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201503115