About this Research Topic

Background

Microglia are the resident immune cells of the Central Nervous System (CNS) and play a key role during development, synapse formation, and the immune defense. Due to their role in the CNS as well as in the Immune System, they have also been identified as important players in the progression of neurodegenerative diseases with an underlying neuroinflammation, such as Parkinson´s and Alzheimer´s diseases. Hence, microglia can play a dual role and adopt either a neuroprotective phenotype, supporting the CNS, or a neuroinflammatory phenotype with fatal consequences for neurons and their environment. Although the existence of microglia is now known for more than 100 years, it was not until the last decades that many of their essential functions in the CNS were revealed. Nowadays, researchers have started to study the intracellular mechanism of these functions and thus it would be very timely to dedicate a Research Topic to these recent results.

The goal of this Research Topic is to cover a broad range of cell biological areas to explain the subcellular mechanisms originating microglial functions, which are often related to pathological conditions as for example in neurodegenerative diseases. Thus controlling and understanding these intracellular organization and signaling events would lead to a better comprehension of microglial responses to extracellular cues and their behavior in the CNS. After the revelation of a variety of genomic data of microglia, it is now time to exploit these big datasets and assign a function to each of these genes by detailed biochemical and cell biological studies, including high-resolution microscopy. Although this type of research is time-consuming and tedious, the results are highly rewarding, as they will reveal the molecular mechanism of microglial characteristics. The discovery of these intracellular events will ultimately pave the way to effective therapies for many neurodegenerative diseases, which are incurable up-to-date. In order to gain visibility of this important and upcoming field in microglia research, we would like to invite scientists to publish their cell biological findings in this Research Topic.

With the term “Cell Biology” we refer to all intracellular molecules, structures, organelles, and subcellular interactions inside microglia. Thus, this Research Topic is open to all recent advances in any cell biological subtopic describing intracellular signaling and mechanisms of microglial functions. These include, but are not limited to:

- Cytoskeletal rearrangements

- Signaling pathways, including ion signaling

- Migration

- Membrane trafficking, including the secretory pathway and endocytic routes

- Intracellular organelles and their communication between each other

- Morphological changes

- Phagocytosis

- Autophagy

- Nuclear import and export

- Release of molecules and extracellular vesicles

- Proliferation

- Apoptosis

In this Research Topic, we would like to publish mainly original research articles, brief research reports, and reviews, but also other types of manuscripts can be considered upon editorial assessment. All article types accepted in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience are listed and described (incl. word count) in https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cellular-neuroscience#article-types.

Keywords: Apoptosis, Autophagy, Cytoskeleton, Intracellular Organelles, Membrane Trafficking, Migration, Morphology, Nuclear Transport, Phagocytosis, Proliferation, Signaling Pathways

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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