Department Structural and Functional Plasticity of the Nervous System, Center for Neuroscience, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands ; Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam, Department Anatomy and Neurosciences, VU University Medical Center Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam, Department Anatomy and Neurosciences, VU University Medical Center Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Front Cell Neurosci. 2015 Mar 12;9:84. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2015.00084. eCollection 2015.
Microglia are important cells in the brain that can acquire different morphological and functional phenotypes dependent on the local situation they encounter. Knowledge on the region-specific gene signature of microglia may hold valuable clues for microglial functioning in health and disease, e.g., Parkinson's disease (PD) in which microglial phenotypes differ between affected brain regions. Therefore, we here investigated whether regional differences exist in gene expression profiles of microglia that are isolated from healthy rat brain regions relevant for PD. We used an optimized isolation protocol based on a rapid isolation of microglia from discrete rat gray matter regions using density gradients and fluorescent-activated cell sorting. Application of the present protocol followed by gene expression analysis enabled us to identify subtle differences in region-specific microglial expression profiles and show that the genetic profile of microglia already differs between different brain regions when studied under control conditions. As such, these novel findings imply that brain region-specific microglial gene expression profiles exist that may contribute to the region-specific differences in microglia responsivity during disease conditions, such as seen in, e.g., PD.
小胶质细胞是大脑中重要的细胞，它们可以根据所处的局部环境获得不同的形态和功能表型。了解小胶质细胞在特定区域的基因特征可能为小胶质细胞在健康和疾病中的功能提供有价值的线索，例如帕金森病（PD），其中受影响的大脑区域之间的小胶质细胞表型不同。因此，我们在这里研究了从小鼠大脑中与 PD 相关的健康区域分离的小胶质细胞的基因表达谱是否存在区域差异。我们使用了一种优化的分离方案，该方案基于使用密度梯度和荧光激活细胞分选从离散的大鼠灰质区域快速分离小胶质细胞。应用本方案进行基因表达分析使我们能够识别出小胶质细胞在特定区域表达谱中的细微差异，并表明在对照条件下研究时，小胶质细胞的遗传特征已经在不同脑区之间存在差异。因此，这些新发现表明，存在特定于脑区的小胶质细胞基因表达谱，这可能有助于在疾病状态下（例如，在 PD 中）小胶质细胞反应的特定于区域的差异。
