Fig. 1

Proteomic analysis reveals sex-specific differences in WT and Nf1 ± microglia A: Heatmap of significantly regulated proteins (adj. p < 0.05) in male and female WT and Nf1 ± microglia. Cluster analysis revealed high in-group similarities, indicating that each sample did highly correlate to samples from the same group and less to those from other groups. Furthermore, differentially expressed genes clustered into 3 different major clusters which are annotated and analyzed in more detail in Additional File 1: Fig. S1.B: Number of significantly regulated proteins between the indicated pairwise comparisons. Note that there were many expressional differences between male WT and Nf1 ± , as well as between male and female WT, microglia. Only a few significant differences were found between male Nf1 ± vs. female Nf1 ± microglia and female WT vs. female Nf1 ± microglia. C: Comparison of Nf1 protein levels in the analyzed samples. As expected, Nf1 expression was reduced by ~ 50% in male and female Nf1 ± compared to WT samples. D: GO term analysis of proteins upregulated in male Nf1 ± compared to male WT microglia. Analysis was performed using Metascape [74]. Note that many terms refer to microglia morphology and surveillance. E: Volcano Plot comparing proteomic data from male WT and Nf1 ± microglia. Position of Nf1 is highlighted by an orange circle; those of the purinergic receptors P2ry12, P2rx4 and P2rx7 by black squares