Christina J. Yung

TL;DR: The transcriptsome of aged human cortical microglia are described, and age-related gene expression as related to neurodegeneration is shown, confirming the existence of an aging-related microglial phenotype in the aged human brain and its involvement in the pathological processes associated with brain aging.

TL;DR: The population structure of live microglia purified from human cerebral cortex samples obtained at autopsy and during neurosurgical procedures is investigated, and it is found that some subsets are enriched for disease-related genes and RNA signatures.

TL;DR: The extent of microglial heterogeneity in the aging human brain remains a central, yet poorly explored question in light of the development of therapies targeting this cell type in age related neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

TL;DR: It is shown that using more accurate marker sets can substantially improve statistical power in detecting cell-type specific expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) and including the cell- type proportion estimates as confounding factors is important for reducing false associations between Alzheimer’s disease phenotypes and gene expression.

TL;DR: Overall, human microglia appear to exist in different functional states with varying levels of involvement in different brain pathologies, and several states show enrichment for genes found in disease-associated mouse microglial states, suggesting additional diversity among human microGlia.