The polarization of cells often involves the transport of specific mRNAs and their localized translation in distal projections. Neurons and glia are both known to contain long cytoplasmic processes, while localized transcripts have only been studied extensively in neurons, not glia, especially in intact nervous systems. Here, we predict 1,740 localized Drosophila glial transcripts by extrapolating from our meta-analysis of seven existing studies characterizing the localized transcriptomes and translatomes of synaptically associated mammalian glia. We demonstrate that the localization of mRNAs in mammalian glial projections strongly predicts the localization of their high-confidence Drosophila homologs in larval motor neuron-associated glial projections and are highly statistically enriched for genes associated with neurological diseases. We further show that some of these localized glial transcripts are specifically required in glia for structural plasticity at the nearby neuromuscular junction synapses. We conclude that peripheral glial mRNA localization is a common and conserved phenomenon and propose that it is likely to be functionally important in disease.

中文翻译：

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小鼠神经胶质突起转录本预测参与可塑性的局部果蝇神经胶质 mRNA。


细胞的极化通常涉及特定 mRNA 的运输及其在远端投射中的局部翻译。已知神经元和神经胶质细胞都含有长的细胞质突起，而局部转录本仅在神经元而非神经胶质细胞中进行了广泛研究，尤其是在完整的神经系统中。在这里，我们通过对七项现有研究的荟萃分析进行推断，预测了 1,740 个局部果蝇神经胶质转录本，这些研究表征了突触相关的哺乳动物神经胶质细胞的局部转录组和翻译组。我们证明，哺乳动物胶质细胞投射中 mRNA 的定位强烈预测了其高置信度果蝇同源物在幼虫运动神经元相关神经胶质投射中的定位，并且与神经系统疾病相关的基因在统计上高度富集。我们进一步表明，其中一些局部神经胶质转录物是神经胶质细胞中特别需要的，以实现附近神经肌肉接头突触的结构可塑性。我们得出的结论是，外周胶质细胞 mRNA 定位是一种常见且保守的现象，并提出它可能在疾病中具有重要的功能。