Cell-type Specific Labeling of Synapses in vivo through Synaptic Tagging with Recombination (STaR)

By Yi Chen, Orkun Akin, Aljoscha Nern, C. Tsui, Matthew Y. Pecot, S. Zipursky. 2014

175 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary The study of synaptic specificity and plasticity in the Central Nervous System (CNS) is limited by the inability to efficiently visualize synapses in identified neurons using light microscopy. Here we describe Synaptic Tagging with Recombination (STaR), a method for labeling endogenous presynaptic and postsynaptic proteins in a cell-type specific fashion. We modified genomic loci encoding synaptic proteins within Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes such that these proteins, expressed at endogenous levels and with normal spatiotemporal patterns, were labeled in an inducible fashion in specific neurons through targeted expression of site-specific recombinases. Within the Drosophila visual system, the number and distribution of synapses correlate with Electron Microscopy studies. Using two different recombination systems, presynaptic and postsynaptic specializations of synaptic pairs can be co-labeled. STaR also allows synapses within the CNS to be studied in live animals non-invasively. In principle, STaR can be adapted to the mammalian nervous system.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Molecular Biology

Citations in the corpus

• Coordinated and Compartmentalized Neuromodulation Shapes Sensory Processing in Drosophila (2015, neutral): “; UAS-FLP, brp>STOP>GFP (Chen et al., 2014) (gift from Larry Zipursky, University of California, Los Angeles).”
• Active Protection: Learning-Activated Raf/MAPK Activity Protects Labile Memory from Rac1-Independent Forgetting. (2018, unknown): “We used the STaR (synaptic tagging with recombination) system (Chen et al., 2014), which allows us to tag the endogenous active zone protein Bruchpilot (BRP) in defined neurons, to label the active zones of gneurons.”