Microglia shape AgRP neuron postnatal development via regulating perineuronal net plasticity

Microglia, the resident immune cells in the brain, have been shown to significantly influence neurodevelopment. However, their role in shaping the postnatal development of hypothalamic neural circuits remains underexplored. In this study, we investigated the dynamic changes of microglia in the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus (ARC) during lactation and their impact on the maturation of AgRP and POMC neurons. to investigate the contribution of microglia to the hypothalamic postnatal development, we deplete microglia from P9-P15 which is a critical time window of ARC neurons development. Then we perfromed the gene expression profiling analysis from the data obtained from RNA-seq of 8 P19 hypothalami (4 vehicle group and 4 PLX3397 group). Each group contains 2 males and 2 females.