Lost in elimination: Mechanismen des axonabbaus

Axon loss is an important process both in development and during diseases of the nervous system. While the molecular mechanisms that mediate axon loss are largely elusive, modern imaging technology affords an increasingly clear view of the cellular processes that allow nerve cells to shed individual axon branches or even dismantle entire parts of their axonal projections. In this review, I discuss the characteristics of post-traumatic Wallerian degeneration, the axon loss process, which is currently best understood. Subsequently, I describe the properties of a number of recently discovered axon loss phenomena. These phenomena explain some of the axon loss that occurs locally after axon transection, during neuroinflammatory insults and as part of normal neurodevelopment.