Fig. 1

Microglia depletion efficiency of CX3CR1^CreER/+:R26^iDTR/+ transgenic mice. (a) Timeline of Ta and DT administration in the selective microglial depletion model. (b) Represent images of microglia after vehicle treatment. Microglia evenly distributed throughout the cerebral cortex in mice brain without microglial depletion. (c) Represent images of microglia after Ta and DT treatment. After drug treatment, most native microglia were depleted and the remnants exhibited appearance similar to activated state and distributed randomly. (d) Represent images of microglia only with intragastric administration of Ta but not DT. (e) Represent images of microglia only with intraperitoneal injection of DT but not Ta. No significant effect was found on the phenotype and density of microglia in cortex between single- and no-drug groups (b-e scale bar = 50 μm). (f) Densities of microglia in the cerebral cortex with drug treatment or not (n ≥5, **p < 0.01). (g) FACS analysis showing percentage of CD11b⁺ cells in the blood and spleen of mice after vehicle or Ta⁺DT⁺ treatment. (h) Quantification of the FACS analysis results shown in (g) (n = 4)