scholarly journals Highly efficient and super-bright neurocircuit tracing using vector mixing-based virus cocktail

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pei Sun ◽  
Sen Jin ◽  
Sijue Tao ◽  
Junjun Wang ◽  
Anan Li ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTMapping the detailed cell-type-specific input networks and neuronal projectomes are essential to understand brain function in normal and pathological states. However, several properties of current tracing systems, including labeling sensitivity, trans-synaptic efficiencies, reproducibility among different individuals and different Cre-driver animals, still remained unsatisfactory. Here, we developed MAP-ENVIVIDERS, a recombinase system-dependent vector mixing-based strategy for highly efficient neurocircuit tracing. MAP-ENVIVIDERS enhanced tracing efficiency of input networks across the whole brain, with over 10-fold improvement in diverse previously poor-labeled input brain regions and particularly, up to 70-fold enhancement in brainstem compared with the current standard rabies-virus-mediated systems. MAP-ENVIVIDERS was over 10-fold more sensitive for cell-type-specific labeling than previous strategies, enabling us to capture individual cell-type-specific neurons with extremely complex axonal branches and presynaptic axonal boutons, both about one order of magnitude than previously reported and considered. MAP-ENVIVIDERS provides powerful tools for deconstructing novel input/output circuitry towards functional studies and disorders-related mechanisms.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Song-Lin Ding ◽  
Zizhen Yao ◽  
Karla E. Hirokawa ◽  
Thuc Nghi Nguyen ◽  
Lucas T. Graybuck ◽  
...  

SummarySubicular region plays important roles in spatial processing and many cognitive functions and these were mainly attributed to subiculum (Sub) rather than prosubiculum (PS). Using single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) technique we have identified up to 27 distinct transcriptomic clusters/cell types, which were registered to anatomical sub-domains in Sub and PS. Based on reliable molecular markers derived from transcriptomic clustering and in situ hybridization data, the precise boundaries of Sub and PS have been consistently defined along the dorsoventral (DV) axis. Using these borders to evaluate Cre-line specificity and tracer injections, we have found bona fide Sub projections topographically to structures important for spatial processing and navigation. In contrast, PS along DV axis sends its outputs to widespread brain regions crucial for motivation, emotion, reward, stress, anxiety and fear. Brain-wide cell-type specific projections of Sub and PS have also been revealed using specific Cre-lines. These results reveal two molecularly and anatomically distinct circuits centered in Sub and PS, respectively, providing a consistent explanation to historical data and a clearer foundation for future functional studies.Highlights27 transcriptomic cell types identified in and spatially registered to “subicular” regions.Anatomic borders of “subicular” regions reliably determined along dorsal-ventral axis.Distinct cell types and circuits of full-length subiculum (Sub) and prosubiculum (PS).Brain-wide cell-type specific projections of Sub and PS revealed with specific Cre-lines.In BriefDing et al. show that mouse subiculum and prosubiculum are two distinct regions with differential transcriptomic cell types, subtypes, neural circuits and functional correlation. The former has obvious topographic projections to its main targets while the latter exhibits widespread projections to many subcortical regions associated with reward, emotion, stress and motivation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiao Li ◽  
Jakob Seidlitz ◽  
John Suckling ◽  
Feiyang Fan ◽  
Gong-Jun Ji ◽  
...  

AbstractMajor depressive disorder (MDD) has been shown to be associated with structural abnormalities in a variety of spatially diverse brain regions. However, the correlation between brain structural changes in MDD and gene expression is unclear. Here, we examine the link between brain-wide gene expression and morphometric changes in individuals with MDD, using neuroimaging data from two independent cohorts and a publicly available transcriptomic dataset. Morphometric similarity network (MSN) analysis shows replicable cortical structural differences in individuals with MDD compared to control subjects. Using human brain gene expression data, we observe that the expression of MDD-associated genes spatially correlates with MSN differences. Analysis of cell type-specific signature genes suggests that microglia and neuronal specific transcriptional changes account for most of the observed correlation with MDD-specific MSN differences. Collectively, our findings link molecular and structural changes relevant for MDD.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pengfei Dong ◽  
Gabriel E. Hoffman ◽  
Pasha Apontes ◽  
Jaroslav Bendl ◽  
Samir Rahman ◽  
...  

Enhancer RNAs (eRNAs) constitute an important tissue- and cell-type-specific layer of the regulome. Identification of risk variants for neuropsychiatric diseases within enhancers underscores the importance of understanding the population-level variation of eRNAs in the human brain. We jointly analyzed cell type-specific transcriptome and regulome data to identify 30,795 neuronal and 23,265 non-neuronal eRNAs, expanding the catalog of known human brain eRNAs by an order of magnitude. Examination of the population-level variation of the transcriptome and regulome in 1,382 brain samples identified reproducible changes affecting cis- and trans-co-regulation of eRNA-gene modules in schizophrenia. We show that 13% of schizophrenia heritability is jointly mediated in cis by brain gene and eRNA expression. Inclusion of eRNAs in transcriptome-wide association studies facilitated fine-mapping and functional interpretation of disease loci. Overall, our study characterizes the eRNA-gene regulome and genetic mechanisms in the human cortex in both healthy and disease states.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 782-788 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiebiao Wang ◽  
Bernie Devlin ◽  
Kathryn Roeder

Abstract Motivation Patterns of gene expression, quantified at the level of tissue or cells, can inform on etiology of disease. There are now rich resources for tissue-level (bulk) gene expression data, which have been collected from thousands of subjects, and resources involving single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data are expanding rapidly. The latter yields cell type information, although the data can be noisy and typically are derived from a small number of subjects. Results Complementing these approaches, we develop a method to estimate subject- and cell-type-specific (CTS) gene expression from tissue using an empirical Bayes method that borrows information across multiple measurements of the same tissue per subject (e.g. multiple regions of the brain). Analyzing expression data from multiple brain regions from the Genotype-Tissue Expression project (GTEx) reveals CTS expression, which then permits downstream analyses, such as identification of CTS expression Quantitative Trait Loci (eQTL). Availability and implementation We implement this method as an R package MIND, hosted on https://github.com/randel/MIND. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Frickenhaus ◽  
Marina Wagner ◽  
Moushami Mallik ◽  
Marica Catinozzi ◽  
Erik Storkebaum

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qi Song ◽  
Jiyoung Lee ◽  
Shamima Akter ◽  
Ruth Grene ◽  
Song Li

AbstractRecent advances in genomic technologies have generated large-scale protein-DNA interaction data and open chromatic regions for multiple plant species. To predict condition specific gene regulatory networks using these data, we developed the Condition Specific Regulatory network inference engine (ConSReg), which combines heterogeneous genomic data using sparse linear model followed by feature selection and stability selection to select key regulatory genes. Using Arabidopsis as a model system, we constructed maps of gene regulation under more than 50 experimental conditions including abiotic stresses, cell type-specific expression, and stress responses in individual cell types. Our results show that ConSReg accurately predicted gene expressions (average auROC of 0.84) across multiple testing datasets. We found that, (1) including open chromatin information from ATAC-seq data significantly improves the performance of ConSReg across all tested datasets; (2) choice of negative training samples and length of promoter regions are two key factors that affect model performance. We applied ConSReg to Arabidopsis single cell RNA-seq data of two root cell types (endodermis and cortex) and identified five regulators in two root cell types. Four out of the five regulators have additional experimental evidence to support their roles in regulating gene expression in Arabidopsis roots. By comparing regulatory maps in abiotic stress responses and cell type-specific experiments, we revealed that transcription factors that regulate tissue levels abiotic stresses tend to also regulate stress responses in individual cell types in plants.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunyu A. Duan ◽  
Yuxin Pan ◽  
Guofen Ma ◽  
Taotao Zhou ◽  
Siyu Zhang ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTSurvival in a dynamic environment requires animals to plan future actions based on past sensory evidence. However, the neural circuit mechanism underlying this crucial brain function, referred to as motor planning, remains unclear. Here, we employ projection-specific imaging and perturbation methods to investigate the direct pathway linking two key nodes in the motor planning network, the secondary motor cortex (M2) and the midbrain superior colliculus (SC), in mice performing a memory-dependent perceptual decision task. We find dynamic coding of choice information in SC-projecting M2 neurons during motor planning and execution, and disruption of this information by inhibiting M2 terminals in SC selectively impaired decision maintenance. Furthermore, cell-type-specific optogenetic circuit mapping shows that M2 terminals modulate both excitatory and inhibitory SC neurons with balanced synaptic strength. Together, our results reveal the dynamic recruitment of the premotor-collicular pathway as a circuit mechanism for motor planning.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiangyu Luo ◽  
Can Yang ◽  
Yingying Wei

In epigenome-wide association studies, the measured signals for each sample are a mixture of methylation profiles from different cell types. The current approaches to the association detection only claim whether a cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) site is associated with the phenotype or not, but they cannot determine the cell type in which the risk-CpG site is affected by the phenotype. Here, we propose a solid statistical method, HIgh REsolution (HIRE), which not only substantially improves the power of association detection at the aggregated level as compared to the existing methods but also enables the detection of risk-CpG sites for individual cell types.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan W. Hass ◽  
Zachary A. Sorrentino ◽  
Yuxing Xia ◽  
Grace M. Lloyd ◽  
John Q. Trojanowski ◽  
...  

AbstractSynucleinopathies, including Parkinson’s disease (PD), Lewy body dementia (LBD), Alzheimer’s disease with amygdala restricted Lewy bodies (AD/ALB), and multiple system atrophy (MSA) comprise a spectrum of neurodegenerative disorders characterized by the presence of distinct pathological α-synuclein (αSyn) inclusions. Experimental and pathological studies support the notion that αSyn aggregates contribute to cellular demise and dysfunction with disease progression associated with a prion-like spread of αSyn aggregates via conformational templating. The initiating event(s) and factors that contribute to diverse forms of synucleinopathies remain poorly understood. A major post-translational modification of αSyn associated with pathological inclusions is a diverse array of specific truncations within the carboxy terminal region. While these modifications have been shown experimentally to induce and promote αSyn aggregation, little is known about their disease-, region- and cell type specific distribution. To this end, we generated a series of monoclonal antibodies specific to neo-epitopes in αSyn truncated after residues 103, 115, 119, 122, 125, and 129. Immunocytochemical investigations using these new tools revealed striking differences in the αSyn truncation pattern between different synucleinopathies, brain regions and specific cellular populations. In LBD, neuronal inclusions in the substantia nigra and amygdala were positive for αSyn cleaved after residues 103, 119, 122, and 125, but not 115. In contrast, in the same patients' brain αSyn cleaved at residue 115, as well as 103, 119 and 122 were abundant in the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus. In patients with AD/ALB, these modifications were only weakly or not detected in amygdala αSyn inclusions. αSyn truncated at residues 103, 115, 119, and 125 was readily present in MSA glial cytoplasmic inclusions, but 122 cleaved αSyn was only weakly or not present. Conversely, MSA neuronal pathology in the pontine nuclei was strongly reactive to the αSyn x-122 neo-epitope but did not display any reactivity for αSyn 103 cleavage. These studies demonstrate significant disease-, region- and cell type specific differences in carboxy terminal αSyn processing associated with pathological inclusions that likely contributes to their distinct strain-like prion properties and promotes the diversity displayed in the degrees of these insidious diseases.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongjin Park ◽  
Liang He ◽  
Jose Davila-Velderrain ◽  
Lei Hou ◽  
Shahin Mohammadi ◽  
...  

AbstractThousands of genetic variants acting in multiple cell types underlie complex disorders, yet most gene expression studies profile only bulk tissues, making it hard to resolve where genetic and non-genetic contributors act. This is particularly important for psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders that impact multiple brain cell types with highly-distinct gene expression patterns and proportions. To address this challenge, we develop a new framework, SPLITR, that integrates single-nucleus and bulk RNA-seq data, enabling phenotype-aware deconvolution and correcting for systematic discrepancies between bulk and single-cell data. We deconvolved 3,387 post-mortem brain samples across 1,127 individuals and in multiple brain regions. We find that cell proportion varies across brain regions, individuals, disease status, and genotype, including genetic variants in TMEM106B that impact inhibitory neuron fraction and 4,757 cell-type-specific eQTLs. Our results demonstrate the power of jointly analyzing bulk and single-cell RNA-seq to provide insights into cell-type-specific mechanisms for complex brain disorders.


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