Transcriptional control of microglia phenotypes in health and disease

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

<p class="first" id="d7219362e140">Microglia are the main resident macrophage population of the CNS and perform numerous functions required for CNS development, homeostasis, immunity, and repair. Many lines of evidence also indicate that dysregulation of microglia contributes to the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative and behavioral diseases. These observations provide a compelling argument to more clearly define the mechanisms that control microglia identity and function in health and disease. In this Review, we present a conceptual framework for how different classes of transcription factors interact to select and activate regulatory elements that control microglia development and their responses to internal and external signals. We then describe functions of specific transcription factors in normal and pathological contexts and conclude with a consideration of open questions to be addressed in the future. </p>

Related collections

Most cited references 82

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

Editorial

Chunzai Wang, Andrea Vacca, Antony Williams … (1999)

0 comments Cited 710 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

The Microglial Sensome Revealed by Direct RNA Sequencing

Suzanne E Hickman, Nathan D. Kingery, Toshiro K Ohsumi … (2013)

Microglia, the principal neuroimmune sentinels of the brain, continuously sense changes in their environment and respond to invading pathogens, toxins and cellular debris. Microglia exhibit plasticity and can assume neurotoxic or neuroprotective priming states that determine their responses to danger. We used direct RNA sequencing, without amplification or cDNA synthesis, to determine the quantitative transcriptomes of microglia of healthy adult and aged mice. We validated our findings by fluorescent dual in-situ hybridization, unbiased proteomic analysis and quantitative PCR. We report here that microglia have a distinct transcriptomic signature and express a unique cluster of transcripts encoding proteins for sensing endogenous ligands and microbes that we term the “sensome”. With aging, sensome transcripts for endogenous ligand recognition are downregulated, whereas those involved in microbe recognition and host defense are upregulated. In addition, aging is associated with an overall increase in expression of microglial genes involved in neuroprotection.

0 comments Cited 625 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

The selection and function of cell type-specific enhancers.

Sven Heinz, Casey E. Romanoski, Christopher Benner … (2015)

The human body contains several hundred cell types, all of which share the same genome. In metazoans, much of the regulatory code that drives cell type-specific gene expression is located in distal elements called enhancers. Although mammalian genomes contain millions of potential enhancers, only a small subset of them is active in a given cell type. Cell type-specific enhancer selection involves the binding of lineage-determining transcription factors that prime enhancers. Signal-dependent transcription factors bind to primed enhancers, which enables these broadly expressed factors to regulate gene expression in a cell type-specific manner. The expression of genes that specify cell type identity and function is associated with densely spaced clusters of active enhancers known as super-enhancers. The functions of enhancers and super-enhancers are influenced by, and affect, higher-order genomic organization.