Primary Microglia Isolation from Mixed Glial Cell Cultures of Neonatal Rat Brain Tissue

Microglia account for approximately 12% of the total cellular population in the mammalian brain. While neurons and astrocytes are considered the major cell types of the nervous system, microglia play a significant role in normal brain physiology by monitoring tissue for debris and pathogens and maintaining homeostasis in the parenchyma via phagocytic activity 1,2. Microglia are activated during a number of injury and disease conditions, including neurodegenerative disease, traumatic brain injury, and nervous system infection 3. Under these activating conditions, microglia increase their phagocytic activity, undergo morpohological and proliferative change, and actively secrete reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, pro-inflammatory chemokines and cytokines, often activating a paracrine or autocrine loop 4-6. As these microglial responses contribute to disease pathogenesis in neurological conditions, research focused on microglia is warranted. Due to the cellular heterogeneity of the brain, it is technically difficult to obtain sufficient microglial sample material with high purity during in vivo experiments. Current research on the neuroprotective and neurotoxic functions of microglia require a routine technical method to consistently generate pure and healthy microglia with sufficient yield for study. We present, in text and video, a protocol to isolate pure primary microglia from mixed glia cultures for a variety of downstream applications. Briefly, this technique utilizes dissociated brain tissue from neonatal rat pups to produce mixed glial cell cultures. After the mixed glial cultures reach confluency, primary microglia are mechanically isolated from the culture by a brief duration of shaking. The microglia are then plated at high purity for experimental study. The principle and protocol of this methodology have been described in the literature 7,8. Additionally, alternate methodologies to isolate primary microglia are well described 9-12. Homogenized brain tissue may be separated by density gradient centrifugation to yield primary microglia 12. However, the centrifugation is of moderate length (45 min) and may cause cellular damage and activation, as well as, cause enriched microglia and other cellular populations. Another protocol has been utilized to isolate primary microglia in a variety of organisms by prolonged (16 hr) shaking while in culture 9-11. After shaking, the media supernatant is centrifuged to isolate microglia. This longer two-step isol