Microglia Proliferation Module Antibody Sampler Kit

Background

Distinct microglial activation states have been identified using RNA-seq data from a vast array of neurological disease and aging models. These activation states have been categorized into modules corresponding to proliferation, neurodegeneration, interferon-relation, LPS-relation, and many others (1). Previous work identifying markers of specific brain cell types using RNA-seq has shown HS1 and ASC/TMS1 to be useful and specific tools to study microglia (2). HS1 is a protein kinase substrate that is expressed only in tissues and cells of hematopoietic origin (3) and ASC/TMS1 has been found to be a critical component of inflammatory signaling where it associates with and activates caspase-1 in response to pro-inflammatory signals (4).
Ki-67 is a nuclear nonhistone protein (5) universally expressed among proliferating cells and absent in quiescent cells (6). Minichromosome maintenance protein 2 (MCM2) is a nuclear protein that plays a role in DNA replication and cell division (7) and is commonly used as a marker for cell proliferation, including brain tissue (8). Survivin binds and inhibits caspase-3, controlling the checkpoint in the G2/M-phase of the cell cycle by inhibiting apoptosis and promoting cell division (9). Aurora A, B, and C are a family of highly conserved serine/threonine kinases that regulate chromosomal alignment and segregation during mitosis and meiosis. Their activity requires autophosphorylation of a threonine within their kinase domain at site Thr288 of Aurora A, Thr232 of Aurora B, and Thr198 of Aurora C (10). Heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) α and β are heterochromatic adaptor molecules involved in both gene silencing and higher order chromatin structure (11).