TY - JOUR T1 - Vision is Required for Cell Type Specification in the Visual Cortex JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2021.08.10.455824 SP - 2021.08.10.455824 AU - Sarah Cheng AU - Salwan Butrus AU - Vincent Xu AU - Srikant Sagireddy AU - Liming Tan AU - Karthik Shekhar AU - S. Lawrence Zipursky Y1 - 2021/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/10/2021.08.10.455824.abstract N2 - The role of postnatal experience in mammalian cortical development, while long appreciated, is poorly understood at the resolution of cell types. To explore this issue, we used single-nucleus RNA-sequencing to profile the mouse visual cortex at different times in postnatal life with and without visual experience. The identities of glutamatergic cell types in upper layers (L) (L2/3/4) were established following eye opening. L2/3 cell types formed a spatial continuum, defined by the graded expression of ∼200 genes that included candidates associated with synapse formation and axon projection specificity. These patterns required visual input for both their establishment and maintenance. By contrast to upper-layer glutamatergic neurons, the remaining neuronal and non-neuronal types were established in a vision-independent fashion. Our results demonstrate that vision acts preferentially in the specification of cortical cell types and provide a framework for exploring experience-dependent cortical development at the cellular and molecular level.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -