Comparison of microglia between males and females

Sex differences in brain structure and function are of substantial scientific interest because of sex-differential susceptibility to psychiatric and neurological disorders. Neuroinflammation is a hallmark of many of these diseases and thus microglia as the brain´s immune competent cells came into focus of sex specific studies. When interpreting transcriptomic results, the assumption is frequently made that the expression level of a transcript reflects that of the downstream protein. In fact, the correlation between transcript expression levels and their protein products have generally been found to be quite low. So far a few studies investigated sex differences in microglia using next generation sequencing but information about the proteome is lacking. We therefore here provide a comprehensive analysis of the transcriptome and the proteome of mouse male and female microglia correlating or not with microglia signature functions. When designing novel or reevaluate current treatment strategies, sex differences in microglia should be taken in consideration.