RNA-seq of mouse brain tissue repopulating microglia in response to traumatic brain injury

We assessed the roles of repopulating microglia in brain repair using mouse models. In this project, we show that removal of microglia from the mouse brain has little impact on the outcome of TBI but inducing the turnover of these cells through either pharmacologic or genetic approaches can yield a neuroprotective microglial phenotype that profoundly aids recovery. As a part of the experimental approaches, we perform bulk RNA sequencing experiments to unbiasedly profile the transcriptome of repopulating microglia. We identified unique gene signatures from repopulating microglia cells and infer how these cells modulate the microenvironment after TBI.