Astrocytes are a type of glial cell that tile the CNS. They interact with multiple cell types, including neurons, glial cells and blood vessels, and are involved or implicated in brain disorders. Progress has been made in understanding astrocytes, but the field lacks detailed information concerning how they perform their multifarious functions, and how and when they influence the operations of the neural circuits with which they interact. One recognized bottleneck to progress has been the paucity of reliable tools with which to explore astrocytes within the adult vertebrate CNS in vivo. However, improved tools for molecular, genetic, morphological and physiological assessments have been developed recently or have been adapted from their original purposes to study neurons and are now being used to systematically document and interrogate astrocyte biology in vivo. These tools, their uses and limitations, and the insights that they afford are summarized in this Review.

中文翻译：

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改进的研究星形胶质细胞的工具。

星形胶质细胞是平铺中枢神经系统的一种神经胶质细胞。它们与多种细胞类型相互作用，包括神经元，神经胶质细胞和血管，并参与或牵涉脑部疾病。在了解星形胶质细胞方面已经取得了进展，但是该领域缺乏有关它们如何执行其多种功能以及它们如何以及何时影响与其相互作用的神经回路操作的详细信息。公认的发展瓶颈是缺乏可靠的工具来在体内探索成年脊椎动物CNS中的星形胶质细胞。但是，针对分子，遗传，形态学和生理学评估最近已经开发出来，或者已经从其最初的目的进行了修改，以研究神经元，现在正被用于系统地记录和询问体内的星形胶质细胞生物学。这些工具，它们的用途和局限性以及它们提供的见解在本概述中进行了总结。