Physiopathologic dynamics of vesicle traffic in astrocytes

The view of how astrocytes, a type of glial cells, contribute to the functioning of the central nervous system (CNS) has changed greatly in the last decade. Although glial cells outnumber neurons in the mammalian brain, it was considered for over a century that they played a subservient role to neurons. This view changed. Functions thought to be exclusively present in neurons, i.e. excitability mediated release of chemical messengers, has also been demonstrated in astrocytes. In this process, following an increase in cytosolic calcium activity, membrane bound vesicles, storing chemical messengers (gliotransmitters), fuse with the plasma membrane, a process known as exocytosis, permitting the exit of vesicle cargo into the extracellular space. Vesicles are delivered to and are removed from the site of exocytosis by an amazingly complex set of processes that we have only started to learn about recently. In this paper we review vesicle traffic, which is subject to physiological regulation and may be changed under pathological conditions.