Development of a rabies virus-based retrograde tracer with high trans-monosynaptic efficiency by reshuffling glycoprotein

Mol Brain. 2021 Jul 8;14(1):109. doi: 10.1186/s13041-021-00821-7.

Abstract

Rabies virus (RV) is the most widely used vector for mapping neural circuits. Previous studies have shown that the RV glycoprotein can be a target to improve the retrograde transsynaptic tracing efficiency. However, the current versions still label only a small portion of all presynaptic neurons. Here, we reshuffled the oG sequence, a chimeric glycoprotein, with positive codon pair bias score (CPBS) based on bioinformatic analysis of mouse codon pair bias, generating ooG, a further optimized glycoprotein. Our experimental data reveal that the ooG has a higher expression level than the oG in vivo, which significantly increases the tracing efficiency by up to 12.6 and 62.1-fold compared to oG and B19G, respectively. The new tool can be used for labeling neural circuits Therefore, the approach reported here provides a convenient, efficient and universal strategy to improve protein expression for various application scenarios such as trans-synaptic tracing efficiency, cell engineering, and vaccine and oncolytic virus designs.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Codon / genetics
  • Dogs
  • Gene Expression Regulation
  • Glycoproteins / metabolism*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Mice
  • Mice, Inbred BALB C
  • Mice, Inbred C57BL
  • Rabies virus / metabolism*
  • Synapses / metabolism*
  • Viral Proteins / metabolism*

Substances

  • Codon
  • Glycoproteins
  • Viral Proteins