Katy Hole

This is an airyscan confocal movie of mitochondria (white) moving around in a mouse astrocyte. Actin filaments are in orange and microtubules are in blue.

Now on bioRxiv! Astrocytes in one brain region (cyan) communicate in expansive networks (magenta). Through tool development, tissue clearing, and many hours on our @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social Z1, we now know these networks are repeatable across mice, plastic, and specific.
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

You're not wrong! There is some great work especially in the cancer field that uses updated tools to convincingly show transfer. However, the majority of astrocyte-neuron studies only use MitoTracker

"Our observations should prompt an essential re-evaluation of the literature concerning astrocyte-neuron mitochondrial transfer" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Great to see new tools developed to assess mitochondrial transfer!

The cell-surface shared proteome of astrocytes and neurons and the molecular foundations of their multicellular interactions Wu et al. used extracellularly displayed horseradish peroxidase (HRP) to label cell-surface proteins (CSPs) of astrocytes and neurons. By mapping CSPs to their origins, they report shared interactions between astrocytes and neurons, as well as extensive interactions of astrocytes with other parenchymal cells. They provide a foundation for exploring astrocyte-neuron interactions in health and disease.

Online now:

The glia‐immune network: Astrocytes and oligodendrocytes as microglial co‐ordinators in health and disease Abstract figure legend The glia-immune network involves the communication(s) of glia via immune signalling pathways. In neuro-homeostasis these pathways have been shown to modulate key processes such...

New topical review from Verity Mitchener,
Mille Thackray and Lorena Arancibia-Cárcamo of
@ukdri.ac.uk on the glia-immune network in health and disease, with a focus on how astrocytes and oligodendrocytes coordinate microglia in Alzheimer's disease pathology

13 of 16 papers used MitoTracker alone to identify transfer - we hope this work prompts a re-evaluation of the literature concerning astrocyte-neuron mitochondrial transfer

Exploring the limitations of mitochondrial dye as a genuine horizontal mitochondrial transfer surrogate - Communications Biology Evidence underscores the non-specificity of mitochondrial dye in assessing horizontal mitochondrial transfer, suggesting that alternative approaches should be considered for gaining nuanced insights i...

This builds on previous work showing that MitoTracker transfers without mitochondria in a contact-dependent manner. www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-05964-6 Additionally, we find that MitoTracker can also transfer from astrocyte conditioned media (ACM) to neurons without mitochondria.

Preprint alert 🚨In collaboration with MSD (UK) - we have found that the mitochondrial dye MitoTracker transfers from astrocytes to neurons independently of mitochondria.