Proteomic dissimilarities of primary microglia and BV2 cells under stimuli

Microglia are the static resident cells possessing the phagocytic properties in the central nervous system (CNS). In many relevant studies, the immortalized murine microglial cell line BV2 has been used as a tool in primary microglia (PM) relevant studies. Microglia participate in neuroinflammation by converting into M1- and M2-like phenotypes. In this study, we established M1- and M2-like phenotype response models by exposing PM and BV2 cells to lipopolysaccharides (LPS) and interlukin-4 (IL-4), respectively, and discovered the proteomic differences between the two types of microglia. It turned out that the BV2 cell responses to LPS and IL-4 were narrower and weaker than that of PM. In addition, irradiation, which has been shown to activate microglia and induces neuroinflammation, was also used as a treatment in this study. The results showed that BV2 cells have stronger capacity of DNA damage repair. Besides, irradiation had a negative effect on the regulation of KEGG pathways such as proteasome, ribosome, oxidative phosphorylation and TCA cycle in both cells. Furthermore, the KEGG pathways including cell cycle and DNA replication (significantly downregulated), and antigen processing and presentation and FC γ R mediated phagocytosis (significantly up-regulated) were only found in irradiated PM. These data demonstrate that PM is more fragile to irradiation. Results in this study indicate that BV2 cells only partially model PM, and thus, using BV2 in microglia related studies should be carefully considered.