Fig. 3

Activation mechanism of microglia. A Volcano plot showing the DEGs between Egr2⁺ M1 microglia and Egr2⁻ M1 microglia. The adjusted P value and gene expression (log fold change) were used for the plot. B PPI network showing the highly expressed proteins of Egr2⁺ M1 microglia. The size and color represent the combined score of each protein. Significant proteins are marked with red circles. C Heatmap showing the enrichment of pathways in different subtypes of microglia in GSVA. High expression is in red, and low expression is in blue. D Violin plot showing the expression of inflammatory receptors in the three groups of microglia. E Gating strategy for sorting Egr2⁺ M1 cells. Egr2⁺ M1 cells are gated as Ccr5⁺C1qa⁺Egr2⁺ cells. F The bar graph shows the qPCR results for Egr2⁺ M1 cells. * denotes a p-value of < 0.05, ** denotes a p-value of < 0.01 and *** denotes a p-value of < 0.001. The levels of inflammatory cytokines like Tnf and members of the AP-1 family were significantly elevated in Egr2⁺ M1 cells compared to normal cells