Permanent Genetic Access to Transiently Active Neurons via TRAP: Targeted Recombination in Active Populations

By Casey J. Guenthner, Kazunari Miyamichi, Helen H. Yang, H. Heller, Liqun Luo. Neuron, 2013

638 citations recorded by the source corpus.

SUMMARY Targeting genetically encoded tools for neural circuit dissection to relevant cellular populations is a major challenge in neurobiology. We developed a new approach, Targeted Recombination in Active Populations (TRAP), to obtain genetic access to neurons that were activated by defined stimuli. This method utilizes mice in which the tamoxifen-dependent recombinase CreERT2 is expressed in an activity-dependent manner from the loci of the immediate early genes Arc and Fos. Active cells that express CreERT2 can undergo recombination only when tamoxifen is present, allowing genetic access to neurons that are active during a time window of less than 12 h. We show that TRAP can selectively provide access to neurons activated by specific somatosensory, visual, and auditory stimuli, and by experience in a novel environment. When combined with tools for labeling, tracing, recording, and manipulating neurons, TRAP offers a powerful new approach for understanding how the brain processes information and generates behavior.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0ef9444f1c2a4ddb12a6b25e14b389ed7f06ea16

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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

Arc Regulates Experience-Dependent Persistent Firing Patterns in Frontal Cortex (2014, methodology): “1), which has been widely used as a marker for neurons activated by recent behavioral experience (Guzowski et al., 2005; Barth, 2007).”
Closed-loop and activity-guided optogenetic control. (2015, positive): “, 2009), although the same construct cannot always reliably drive individual pyramidal cells at such frequencies (Gunaydin et al., 2010).”