Quantitative assessment of microglial morphology and density reveals remarkable consistency in the distribution and morphology of cells within the healthy prefrontal cortex of the rat

Journal of Neuroinflammation

Frederick Rohan Walker²  Sarah J Johnson³  Sarah B Beynon¹  Ratchaniporn Kongsui¹ 

[1] Hunter Medical Research Institute, Newcastle, NSW, Australia;Laboratory of Affective Neuroscience, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia;School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia

关键词: Prefrontal cortex;    Morphology;    Microglia;    Iba-1;   

Others  :  1150485
DOI  :  10.1186/s12974-014-0182-7

 received in 2014-09-18, accepted in 2014-10-10,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Microglial morphology within the healthy brain has been the subject of a number of observational studies. These have suggested that microglia may consist of separate classes, which possess substantially different morphological features. Critically, there have been no systematic quantitative studies of microglial morphology within the healthy brain.

Methods

We examined microglial cells within the adult rat prefrontal cortex. At high magnification, digital reconstructions of cells labelled with the microglial-specific marker ionized calcium-binding adapter molecule-1 (Iba-1) were made in each of the cortical layers. These reconstructions were subsequently analyzed to determine the convex hull area of the cells, their somal perimeter, the length of processes, the number of processes, the extent of process branching and the volume of processes. We additionally examined whether cells¿ morphological features were associated with cell size or numerical density.

Results

Our analysis indicated that while there was substantial variability in the size of cells within the prefrontal cortex, cellular morphology was extremely consistent within each of the cortical layers.

Conclusions

Our results provide quantitative confirmation that microglia are largely homogenous in the uninjured rodent prefrontal cortex.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Kongsui et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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