RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Monosynaptic tracing success depends critically on helper virus concentrations
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 736017
DO 10.1101/736017
A1 Thomas K. Lavin
A1 Lei Jin
A1 Nicholas E. Lea
A1 Ian R. Wickersham
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/08/15/736017.abstract
AB Monosynaptically-restricted transsynaptic tracing using deletion-mutant rabies virus has become a widely used technique in neuroscience, allowing identification, imaging, and manipulation of neurons directly presynaptic to a starting neuronal population. Its most common implementation is to use Cre mouse lines in combination with Cre-dependent “helper” adeno-associated viral vectors (AAVs) to supply the required genes to the targeted population before subsequent injection of a first-generation (ΔG) rabies viral vector. Here we show that the efficiency of transsynaptic spread and the degree of nonspecific labeling in wild-type control animals depend strongly on the concentrations of these helper AAVs. Our results suggest practical guidelines for achieving good results.