I didn't submit an abstract because it wasn't required/necessary! But I will describe the basis of my presentation:
For my second co-op this past spring/summer, I was a researcher in the Thion/Garel Lab at Ecole normale superieure in Paris, France. Here, I focused on characterizing microglia in the perinatal cerebellum, building upon the work of a recent doctoral graduate in the lab. In pre- and perinatal life, microglia are highly diverse, with different transcriptional profiles and most likely, functions. The work to understand the reason for this diversity before microglia become a homogenous population in the mature brain has only just begun. In addition, microglia in the cerebellum are very different from microglia in the rest of the brain, and there has been very little focus on this topic within the field. I showed that over the first postnatal week, microglia increase in density throughout the cerebellum, develop morphologically from amoeboid to ramified, and begin moving from the white matter layer into the more superficial layers of the cerebellum by the end of the first postnatal week. Additionally, I identified distinct clusters of ATM, a specific transcriptional and functional group of microglia, throughout the cerebellum, some clusters remaining conserved, such as in the lateral recess, others transient, with different lobules requiring different needs at distinct time points.
For my second co-op this past spring/summer, I was a researcher in the Thion/Garel Lab at Ecole normale superieure in Paris, France. Here, I focused on characterizing microglia in the perinatal cerebellum, building upon the work of a recent doctoral graduate in the lab. In pre- and perinatal life, microglia are highly diverse, with different transcriptional profiles and most likely, functions. The work to understand the reason for this diversity before microglia become a homogenous population in the mature brain has only just begun. In addition, microglia in the cerebellum are very different from microglia in the rest of the brain, and there has been very little focus on this topic within the field. I showed that over the first postnatal week, microglia increase in density throughout the cerebellum, develop morphologically from amoeboid to ramified, and begin moving from the white matter layer into the more superficial layers of the cerebellum by the end of the first postnatal week. Additionally, I identified distinct clusters of ATM, a specific transcriptional and functional group of microglia, throughout the cerebellum, some clusters remaining conserved, such as in the lateral recess, others transient, with different lobules requiring different needs at distinct time points.