TRACE: An Unbiased Method to Permanently Tag Transiently Activated Inputs

Nathalie Krauth; Valentina Khalil; Meet Jariwala; Noemie Mermet-Joret; Anne-Katrine Vestergaard; Marco Capogna; Sadegh Nabavi

doi:10.3389/fncel.2020.00114

TRACE: An Unbiased Method to Permanently Tag Transiently Activated Inputs

Front Cell Neurosci. 2020 May 12:14:114. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2020.00114. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Nathalie Krauth^{1

2}, Valentina Khalil^{1

2}, Meet Jariwala^{3

4}, Noemie Mermet-Joret^{1

2}, Anne-Katrine Vestergaard^{1

2}, Marco Capogna^{2

3

4}, Sadegh Nabavi^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
² DANDRITE, The Danish Research Institute of Translational Neuroscience, Aarhus, Denmark.
³ Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
⁴ Center for Proteins in Memory-PROMEMO, Danish National Research Foundation, Aarhus, Denmark.

Abstract

A fundamental interest in circuit analysis is to parse out the synaptic inputs underlying a behavioral experience. Toward this aim, we have devised an unbiased strategy that specifically labels the afferent inputs that are activated by a defined stimulus in an activity-dependent manner. We validated this strategy in four brain circuits receiving known sensory inputs. This strategy, as demonstrated here, accurately identifies these inputs.

Keywords: innate fear; mouse behavior; neural circuits; optogenetics; viral tracing.