Microglial cells articles from across Nature Portfolio

Saeki and colleagues show that IRF8 defines the epigenetic landscape in postnatal microglia, thereby directing their transcriptome programs.

Histone H3-mutant gliomas are deadly brain tumours and the tumour microenvironment is not fully understood. Here the authors profile the immune microenvironment from human samples and mouse models and implicate myeloid cells in immune suppression and show inhibition of myeloid cells and checkpoint blockade demonstrates therapeutic benefits in mice.

The authors show that the transcription factors IRF8 and MAFB differentially alter the gene expression profiles of different resident macrophages, which might contribute to their functional diversity within the central nervous system.

Microglia could have health-promoting capacities in age-associated neuroinflammation. Here, the authors describe an autophagy and IL-34 dependent neuroprotective microglia population in the aging brain as a potential therapeutic target.

Cryptococcal meningitis is a life-threatening fungal infection. Here, Mohamed et al find that brain resident microglia do not provide protection against this infection and instead are a site where the fungus may access the micronutrient copper.

Vasek et al. show that microglia perform protein translation in their processes and that this translation is important for the number of processes and formation of phagocytic cups. These findings may provide insight into how microglia respond rapidly to a wide variety of local signals in defined cellular compartments.

A new study by Zhou et al. identifies a unique microglia state in Nasu-Hakola disease and new potential therapeutic targets.

A recent study used a zebrafish model to show that the microbiota promotes social behaviour by stimulating microglial pruning of brain circuits during early neurodevelopment.