physiological function of microglia

On November 29th, 212, Developmental Cell published a research paper entitled "Two-way Functional Regulation between Microglia and Neurons at Rest" by Du Jiulin, Institute of Neurology, Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This work was completed by doctoral students Li Ying and Du Xufei under the guidance of researcher Du Jiulin.

microglia are important immune effector cells in the central nervous system. Under pathological conditions, microglia will be rapidly activated, become amoeba, migrate and participate in a series of immune reactions and tissue repair processes. In the physiological state, microglia are in a "resting" state, and at the same time, many cell processes are constantly expanding and contracting to explore the surrounding environment. For a long time, little is known about the function of resting microglia and its functional significance of close contact with neurons in the environment.

In this study, the author took zebrafish as model animal, and found the bidirectional functional regulation between resting microglia and neurons by using the methods of in vivo * * * focusing and two-photon imaging, glutamate unlocking technology, in vivo electrophysiological recording and fluorescence energy * * * vibration transfer imaging. They first observed the morphology of microglia and the electrical activity of neurons in zebrafish larvae for a long time in vivo, and found that the increase of electrical activity of neurons can attract the processes of resting microglia to move towards neurons with high electrical activity and promote the close contact between them. In this process, Panexin-1 channel expressed by neurons and Rac protein in microglia play an important role. Further research shows that the close contact between resting microglia and neurons can in turn down the spontaneous electrical activity and visual response of the contacted neurons.

this work proves for the first time that the electrical activity of neurons can regulate the movement of resting microglia, and reveals the steady-state regulation of microglia on neuronal activity, which provides a new research idea for the field of neural-immune intersection.

The research work is supported by the 973 Program and major scientific research programs of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Hundred Talents Program of China Academy of Sciences, the Pujiang Talents Program and major basic research projects.