Fig. 2

Microglia surveillance is reduced in male Nf1 ± mice due to decreased ramification A: Sample images of male and female WT and Nf1 ± microglia during 2-photon live cell recording. The MacGreen transgenic mouse lines express GFP in microglia and the cells can be visualized by fluorescence microscopy. Each image is an overlay of the time points t = 0 (red) and t = 20 min (green), thus, process extensions appear in green, retractions in red and resting parts in yellow. Scale bars denote 10 µm. B: Time course of increase of the number of surveyed pixels in maximum-intensity projections of images of male (left) and female (right) WT and Nf1 ± microglia. The first value in the curves is equal to the area of the cell in the first image frame. C: Comparison of surveillance (left) and ramification (right) indices of microglia from male and female WT and Nf1 ± microglia. D: Microglia surveillance normalized to cell area is an expression of the process motility independently of ramification. Note that the normalized surveillance was not different between male WT and male Nf1 + /