Table 1.

A summary of molecular markers discussed in this article

Markers	Description	Reference
Vav1	Expressed in hematopoietic stem cells, endothelial cells, cells in the ovaries and testes and few other lineages	Ogilvy et al. (1998), Joseph et al. (2013)
Csf1	Expressed by multiple cell types besides macrophages, including neurons	Tushinski and Stanley (1983), Pixley and Stanley (2004), Chitu and Stanley (2006), Hamilton (2008), Luo et al. (2013)
CD169	Specific tissue resident macrophage marker	Ohnishi et al. (2013), Chow et al. (2013)
Rag2	Rag2 expressed in lymphoid lineage cells	Shinkai et al. (1992)
F4/80	F4/80 is a well-known macrophage marker, although it may be also expressed in other hematopoietic cells	Austyn and Gordon (1981)
NG2	It is a membrane proteoglycan found in several cell types, including, oligodendrocyte progenitors and pericytes	Birbrair et al. (2013b, 2014a)
Nestin	Expressed in several stem cells, including neural stem cells. It is also present in a pericytes’ subset	Birbrair et al. (2011, 2014a, 2017b)