Back

Microglia Adopt Temporally Specific Subtypes after Irradiation, Correlating with Neuronal Asynchrony

Lastra Romero, A.; Preka, E.; Pizzirusso, G.; Arroyo-Garcia, L. E.; Zisiadis, G. A.; Oliva-Vilarnau, N.; Seitz, T.; Zhou, K.; Gonzalez Isla, A.; Friess, L.; Sun, Y.; Shamikh, A.; Xu, Y.; Zhu, C.; Rodrigues, C.; Fisahn, A.; Joseph, B.; Carlson, L.-M.; Fragkopoulou, A.; Lauschke, V.; Betsholtz, C.; Osman, A.; Blomgren, K.

2025-02-16 neuroscience
10.1101/2025.02.15.638339 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Cranial radiotherapy causes progressive neurocognitive impairments in cancer survivors. Neuroinflammation is a key contributor, but its dynamics and consequences for brain function remain poorly understood. Here, we performed comprehensive longitudinal profiling from 6 hours to 1 year after irradiation (IR) of the mouse hippocampus, using transcriptomic, protein, and histological analyses. We identified delayed microglial responses initiated by mitotic progression coupled interferon signaling. IR rewired the parenchymal phagocyte profiles, triggered by progressive microglial loss, failure of repopulation through self-renewal, and compensatory generation of microglia-like cells derived from peripheral monocytes. These findings were also observed in autopsied human brain. Finally, we demonstrate two phases of neuronal asynchrony, an early one associated with inflammation and a late one associated with aberrant synaptic regulation. These results provide comprehensive, longitudinal insights into microglia responses that can aid in tailoring therapies to preserve cognition in cancer survivors.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.