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A modified protocol of mouse hippocampal primary microglia culture by using manual dissociation, magnetic activated cell sorting and TIC medium

XU Ya-Nan, ZHOU Li-Jun, JIE Ying-Tao, MAI Chun-Lin, ZHANG Jun, LIN Zhen-Jia, TAN Zhi^*

Department of Physiology, Zhongshan School of Medicine and Pain Research Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510080, China

Abstract

In this study, we improved the culture method of mouse hippocampal primary microglia to obtain hippocampal ramified microglia with high activity and purity, which were resemble to the resting status of normal microglia in healthy brain in vivo. Hippocampal tissue was excised from 2–4-week-old SPF C57BL/6J mice and cut into pieces after PBS perfusion, and then manually dissociated into the single-cell suspension by using Miltenyi Biotec’s Adult Brain Dissociation Kit. The tissue fragments such as myelin in the supernatant were removed by debris removal solution in the kit. The cell suspension was incubated with CD11b immunomagnetic beads for 15 min at 4 °C. To obtain high-purity microglia, we used two consecutive cell-sorting steps by magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS). After centrifugation, the cells were resuspended and seeded in a 24-well culture plate. The primary microglia were cultured with complete medium (CM) or TIC medium (a serum-free medium with TGF-β, IL-34 and cholesterol as the main nutritional components) for 4 days, and then were used for further experiments. The results showed that: (1) The cell viability was (56.03 ± 2.10)% by manual dissociation of hippocampus; (2) Compared with immunopanning, two-step MACS sorting allowed for efficient enrichment of 

microglia with higher purity of (86.20 ± 0.68)%; (3) After being incubated in TIC medium for 4 d, microglia exhibited branching, quiescent morphology; (4) The results from qRT-PCR assay showed that the levels of TNF-α, IL-1β and CCL2 mRNA in TIC cultured-microglia were similar to freshly isolated microglia, while those were much higher in CM cultured-microglia after incubation for 4 d and 7 d (P < 0.05). Taken together, compared to the conventional approaches, this modified protocol of mouse hippocampal primary microglia culture by using MACS and TIC medium enables the increased yield and purity of microglia in the quiescent state, which is similar to normal ramified microglia in healthy brain in vivo. 

Key words: microglia; hippocampus; magnetic activated cell sorting; primary culture; cytokine

Received: 2019-03-08　　Accepted: 2019-05-13

Corresponding author: 谈智　　E-mail: tanzhi@mail.sysu.edu.cn

DOI: 10.13294/j.aps.2019.0061

Citing This Article：

XU Ya-Nan, ZHOU Li-Jun, JIE Ying-Tao, MAI Chun-Lin, ZHANG Jun, LIN Zhen-Jia, TAN Zhi. A modified protocol of mouse hippocampal primary microglia culture by using manual dissociation, magnetic activated cell sorting and TIC medium. Acta Physiol Sin 2019; 71 (6): 883-893 (in Chinese with English abstract).