Characterizing the metabolomes of microglia, astrocytes and neurons in ageing and Alzheimer’s brains

Neurons and glia are distinct in their morphology, development and function, possessing unique transcriptomes and proteomes, but little is known about their metabolomes. The challenge of brain cell metabolic profiling is to obtain a large number of cells for reliable analysis. Here we purified microglia, astrocytes and neurons from mouse brains, identifying >70 metabolites through targeted metabolomics and 9,854 metabolite features via untargeted metabolomics. We systematically characterized cell type-enriched metabolites and metabolic pathways, revealing an enrichment of glutathione (GSH) and polyamine metabolism in microglia. This enrichment was validated in vivo and showed significant decreases with ageing and in an Alzheimer’s disease model. Notably, GSH and polyamine metabolism correlated strongly with chemokine-related gene expression. Disrupting the GSH pathway in microglia resulted in downregulation of chemokine-related genes, aberrant morphogenesis and β-amyloid deposition. Our results provide a valuable resource ( https://metabolismocean.org/braincell ) for metabolic studies related to ageing, Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological diseases. Yu, Li and colleagues explore the metabolome of neurons, microglia and astrocytes under normal, ageing and Alzheimer’s disease conditions. They find enrichment of glutathione and polyamine metabolism in microglia, which decreased with ageing and in Alzheimer’s disease.