Microglia cannibalism and efferocytosis leads to shorter lifespans of developmental microglia

ABSTRACT The overproduction of cells and subsequent production of debris is a universal principle of neurodevelopment. Here we show an additional feature of the developing nervous system that causes neural debris – promoted by the sacrificial nature of embryonic microglia that irreversibly become phagocytic after clearing other neural debris. Described as long-lived, microglia colonize the embryonic brain and persist into adulthood. Using transgenic zebrafish to investigate the microglia debris during brain construction, we identified that unlike other neural cell-types that die in developmental stages after they have expanded, necroptosis-dependent microglial debris is prevalent when microglia are expanding in the zebrafish brain. Time-lapse imaging of microglia demonstrates that this debris is cannibalized by other microglia. To investigate features that promote microglia death and cannibalism, we used time-lapse imaging and fate-mapping strategies to track the lifespan of individual developmental microglia. These approaches revealed that instead of embryonic microglia being long-lived cells that completely digest their phagocytic debris, once most developmental microglia in zebrafish become phagocytic they eventually die, including ones that are cannibalistic. These results establish a paradox -- which we tested by increasing neural debris and manipulating phagocytosis -- that once most microglia in the embryo become phagocytic, they die, create debris and then are cannibalized by other microglia, resulting in more phagocytic microglia that are destined to die.