Supplementary Figure 6: Analysis of microglial cell density 6 months after tamoxifen treatment in Casp3^flox/floxCx3cr1^CreERT2 mice.

(a) Analysis of microglia caspase-3 expression 6 months after tamoxifen treatment in Casp3^flox/floxCx3cr1^CreERT2 mice to induce the specific deletion of Casp3 gene in microglia cells. Casp3^flox/flox mice were used as control. Tamoxifen was administered in 7 day-old-mice following standard procedures. The purity of the microglia preparation was evaluated by flow cytometry analysis using CD11b and CD45 antibodies. Genomic DNA was isolated and deletion of the Casp3 floxed sequence was evaluated by qPCR analysis following an ABC primer strategy. Microglia from Casp3^flox/floxCx3cr1^CreERT2 mice had 63 % Casp3 gene deletion 6 months after inducing the deletion. Results are presented relative to Casp3^flox/flox mice, set as 100. (b) This panel shows a representative illustration of Iba1-labeled microglia in the striatum of Casp3^flox/floxCx3cr1^CreERT2 and Casp3^flox/flox mice 6 months after tamoxifen treatment. (c,d) Quantification of the effect of Casp3 gene deletion on microglia cell population in striatum and cortex. Statistics and error bars: mean ± s.d. n=3. Data were analyzed using two-tailed Student’s t-test. ns, not significant (P > 0.05); ****P< 0.0001. Scale bar= 200 μm.