InquiryAs intrinsic immune cells of the central nervous system, microglia play an important immune, monitoring, and protective role. Evidence suggests that microglia are derived from red medullary lineage precursor cells in yolk sac tissue. They migrate, colonize, differentiate, and mature in the brain, eventually reaching a steady-state and maintaining immune homeostasis in the central nervous system environment. In contrast to mature microglia, embryonic microglia exhibit great heterogeneity and are involved in the regulation of various physiological activities.
Figure 1. Microglial activation is involved in the progression of different neurodegenerative diseases. (Bachiller S., et al., 2018)
How we use spatial omics to address microglia-related research questions
The development of microglia throughout the central nervous system and the region-specific fate decisions and state transitions of microglia during early brain development remain to be investigated. CD Genomics uses simultaneous single-cell and spatial transcriptomic analyses to reveal hundreds of molecularly distinct cell types in the nervous system. Precisely revealing the spatio-temporal dynamics of regional specialization and state transitions in developing microglia Provides a powerful tool for understanding cell fate determination and cell heterogeneity in microglia.
- Read barcodes in large-scale tissue sections.
- High-throughput dense reconstruction of cell phenotypes and clonal relationships at the single-cell and tissue levels.
- Unravels microglia migration patterns in densely labeled tissue sections.
Sample requirements: human and rat brain tissue (physiological or pathological)
Technical features and advantages
- No tissue dissociation is required for in situ whole transcriptome readout.
- Provides molecular insights into brain development at the single-cell and tissue levels.
- Enables high-throughput clone tracking and expression profiling.
Practical applications
- Assess the phenotype of microglia.
- Reveal the overall developmental pathways, regional heterogeneity of microglia.
- Understand the genealogical relationships between mature microglia and progenitor cells.
- Dissect the close link between state transitions and regional specificity during early brain development.
- To systematically assess the genealogical relationships between subclasses of all cell types.
We can also do more
Microglia are highly heterogeneous and play an important role in susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease. CD Genomics offers a spatial omics approach that provides new insights into normal microglia function and related disease mechanisms for our clients. It also helps to resolve dysregulated cellular networks near neuronal dysfunction and other pathogenic markers of brain diseases in Alzheimer's disease.
Reference
- Bachiller S., et al., (2018). "Microglia in Neurological Diseases: A Road Map to Brain-Disease Dependent-Inflammatory Response." Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, 12.
