Microglial heterogeneity has been the topic of much discussion in the scientific community. Elucidation of their plasticity and adaptability to disease states triggered early efforts to characterize microglial subsets. Over time, their phenotypes, and later on their homeostatic signature, were revealed, through the use of increasingly advanced transcriptomic techniques. Recently, an increasing number of these "microglial signatures" have been reported in various homeostatic and disease contexts. Remarkably, many of these states show similar overlapping microglial gene expression patterns, both in homeostasis and in disease or injury. In this review, we integrate information from these studies, and we propose a unique subset, for which we introduce a core signature, based on our own research and reports from the literature. We describe that this subset is found in development and in normal aging as well as in diverse diseases. We discuss the functions of this subset as well as how it is induced.

中文翻译：

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发育、衰老和疾病中的保护性小胶质细胞亚群：转录组学研究的教训。

小胶质细胞异质性一直是科学界广泛讨论的话题。对它们的可塑性和对疾病状态的适应性的阐明引发了表征小胶质细胞亚群的早期努力。随着时间的推移，通过使用日益先进的转录组技术，它们的表型以及后来的稳态特征被揭示出来。最近，在各种稳态和疾病背景中报道了越来越多的“小胶质细胞特征”。值得注意的是，许多这些状态在稳态和疾病或损伤中都表现出相似的重叠小胶质细胞基因表达模式。在这篇综述中，我们整合了这些研究的信息，并根据我们自己的研究和文献报告提出了一个独特的子集，并为其引入了核心签名。我们描述了这个子集存在于发育和正常衰老以及多种疾病中。我们讨论这个子集的功能以及它是如何导出的。