RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Freeze-frame imaging of synaptic activity using SynTagMA
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 538041
DO 10.1101/538041
A1 Alberto Perez-Alvarez
A1 Brenna C. Fearey
A1 Christian Schulze
A1 Ryan J. O’Toole
A1 Benjamien Moeyaert
A1 Manuel A. Mohr
A1 Ignacio Arganda-Carreras
A1 Wei Yang
A1 J. Simon Wiegert
A1 Eric R. Schreiter
A1 Christine E. Gee
A1 Michael B. Hoppa
A1 Thomas G. Oertner
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/02/01/538041.abstract
AB Information within the brain travels from neuron to neuron across synapses. At any given moment, only a few synapses within billions will be active and are thought to transmit key information about the environment, a behavior being executed or memory being recalled. Here we present SynTagMA, which marks active synapses within a ~2 s time window. Upon violet illumination, the genetically expressed tag converts from green to red fluorescence if bound to calcium. Targeted to presynaptic terminals, preSynTagMA allows discrimination between active and silent axons. Targeted to excitatory postsynapses, postSynTagMA creates a snapshot of synapses active just before photoconversion. To analyze large datasets, we developed an analysis program that automatically identifies and tracks the fluorescence of thousands of individual synapses in tissue. Together, these tools provide a high throughput method for repeatedly mapping active synapses in vitro and in vivo.