AXL and infection: Interestingly, we observed that during infection, microglia displayed a transcriptional activation state suggestive of a disease-associated microglia (DAM) phenotype, which is commonly associated with neurodegeneration and typified by the downregulation of microglial homeostatic genes (including P2ry12, P2ry13, Hexb, Tmem119, and Fcrls) and concomitant upregulation of microglial disease-associated markers (including Itgax, Apoe, Axl, Clec7a) [26,27] (Fig 1G).