Microglia and CD206+ border-associated mouse macrophages maintain their embryonic origin during Alzheimer's disease
Abstract
Brain microglia and border-associated macrophages (BAMs) display distinct spatial, developmental, and phenotypic features. Although at steady-state, the origins of distinct brain macrophages are well-documented, the dynamics of their replenishment in neurodegenerative disorders remain elusive, particularly for activated CD11c+ microglia and BAMs. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive fate-mapping analysis of murine microglia and BAMs and their turnover kinetics during Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression. We used a novel inducible AD mouse model to investigate the contribution of bone marrow cells to the pool of foetal-derived brain macrophages during the development of AD. We demonstrated that microglia remain a remarkably stable embryonic-derived population even during the progression of AD pathology, indicating that neither parenchymal macrophage subpopulation originates from, nor are replenished by, bone marrow (BM)-derived cells. At the border-associated brain regions, bona fide CD206+ BAMs are minimally replaced by BM-derived cells, and their turnover rates are not accelerated by AD. In contrast, all other myeloid cells are swiftly replenished by BM progenitors. This information further elucidates the turnover kinetics of these cells not only at steady-state, but also in neurodegenerative diseases, which is crucial for identifying potential novel therapeutic targets.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 and supplementary figures
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Ministry of Education - Singapore (MOE AcRF Tier 1)
- Christiane Ruedl
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Simon Yona, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Mice were bred and maintained in a specific pathogen-free animal facility at the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). All animal studies were carried out according to the recommendations of the National Advisory Committee for Laboratory Animal Research and ARF SBS/NIE 18081, and 19093 protocols were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Nanyang Technological University.
Version history
- Received: July 2, 2021
- Preprint posted: July 5, 2021 (view preprint)
- Accepted: October 4, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: October 5, 2021 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: October 18, 2021 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2021, Wu et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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