Spatiotemporal Analysis of Microglial Ca²⁺ Activity at Single-Cell Resolution

Microglia are the sole resident immune cells in the central nervous system. Their morphology is highly plastic, changing depending on their activity. Under homeostatic conditions, microglia possess a highly ramified morphology. This facilitates their monitoring of the surrounding environment through the continuous extending and retracting of their processes. During brain injury and inflammation, however, microglia become activated and undergo dramatic morphological changes, retracting their ramified processes and swelling their cell body. This facilitates activities such as migration and phagocytosis, which microglia undertake to navigate the brain environment to a less pathological state.

This close relationship between microglial morphology and changes in their activity have enabled considerable insights into various microglial functions. However, such morphological and activity changes are themselves phenomena that can result from any number of intracellular signaling pathways. Moreover, the time-lag between stimulus and response, as well as the highly compartmentalized morphology of microglia, make it difficult to isolate the causative mechanisms that underpin function. To solve this problem, we developed a genetically modified mouse line in which a highly sensitive fluorescent Ca²⁺-indicator protein is specifically expressed in microglia.

After describing methods for in vivo microglial Ca²⁺ imaging, this paper presents a structured analysis approach that classifies this Ca²⁺ activity to rationally defined subcellular regions, thus ensuring that the spatial and temporal dimensions of the encoded information are meaningfully extracted. We believe that this approach will provide a detailed understanding of the intracellular signaling rules that govern the diverse array of microglial activities associated with both higher brain functions and pathological conditions.