Morphological changes in microglia in the mouse brain during postnatal development and obesity

Microglia are innate immune cells in the central nervous system (CNS) and play critical roles in proper brain development and function. During postnatal development, microglia have a highly plastic morphology and change rapidly in response to the temporal brain environment. However, their dynamics and phenotypes during this period are still not fully elucidated. Here, we systematically elucidated microglial density and morphological changes during postnatal development as well as in pathological obese conditions. Our results demonstrated a spatiotemporal distribution of microglia in different brain regions associated with gradually increased microglial complexity during postnatal development. Moreover, microglia become reactive in most brain regions of obese mice, but their morphological diversity has a region-specific manner, with an obvious alteration in the hypothalamus. Overall, our data emphasized the morphological dynamics of microglia following developing time windows and provided the basic information for future investigations.