UC Riverside

Transient receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (Trem2) plays a role in the Central Nervous System (CNS) however there is limited understanding of what its role is and how its effects can impact the brain. Trem2 has been seen to be highly expressive on microglia cells, one of the resident immune cells in the brain. Interestingly in the literature Trem2 has been suggestive to play a role in protection during neurodegenerative disease pathogenesis and closely linked to Alzheimer’s Disease. To better understand the role Trem2 may have in the CNS, we have designed experiments to study how the depletion of Trem2 expression impacts the baseline in our mouse models and further how it may impact the immune response when challenged by a proinflammatory stimulant known as lipopolysaccharide (LPS). With the use of mouse model Trem2 knock-out (Trem2KO) in comparison to Wild-Type (WT), data was collected to be able to understand the implications the deletion has on CNS- related pathways. In conjunction with comparison of the two genotypes, studying the differences between the two sexes of male and female is an important factor that experimental studies have lacked to demonstrate. In addition to sex differences our experiments focused on studying differences across age groups; specifically looking at 3 ages including postnatal 15 days (p15), 3 months, and 2 years, equivalating a lifespan. Ultimately, the data was able to show that both age and sex are main drivers in determining the differences further being highly dependent based on the analysis. In basal analysis, data demonstrated sex played the greatest impact in differences whereas in inflammatory response the data suggests age plays the greatest impact.