Microglia in brain development and regeneration.

It has recently emerged that microglia, the tissue-resident macrophages of the central nervous system, play significant non-innate immune roles to support the development, maintenance, homeostasis and repair of the brain. Apart from being highly specialized brain phagocytes, microglia modulate the development and functions of neurons and glial cells through both direct and indirect interactions. Thus, recognizing the elements that influence the homeostasis and heterogeneity of microglia in normal brain development is crucial to understanding the mechanisms that lead to early disease pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental disorders. In this Review, we discuss recent studies that have elucidated the physiological development of microglia and summarize our knowledge of their non-innate immune functions in brain development and tissue repair.

Automated Cell Counting of Macrophages In Situ.

Using the open-source image analysis software CellProfiler to automatically quantify antibody-stained or fluorescently labeled macrophages in situ provides accurate and reproducible cell counts. It is a vastly enhanced alternative method to both manual cell counting and estimation of cell marker expression based on fluorescence intensity. Quantification of tissue-resident macrophages acquired on widefield or confocal microscopes can be batch processed using our pipeline to produce data within minutes.