Sex- and region-specific transcriptomic differences in brainstem and cervical spinal cord microglia in rat offspring exposed to gestational intermittent hypoxia

We analyzed gene expression via RNA-sequencing in medulla and C3-C6 cervical spinal cord microglia isolated from young adult rats exposed to gestational intermittent normoxia or gestational intermittent hypoxia Overall design: G10 sprague dawley rat dams were exposed to one of the following conditions: 1) 11 days of intermittent normoxia (21%/21% O2) or 2) 11 days of intermittent hypoxia (21%/10.5% O2). Offspring were born under normoxic conditions and allowed to grow to 8 weeks. Medulla and C3-C6 cervical spinal cord from 1 male and 1 female from 5 paired litters were harvested. Microglia were immunomagnetically isolated from each region and total RNA isolated for sequencing.