SummaryThe highly specific and complex connectivity between neurons is the hallmark of nervous systems, but techniques for identifying, imaging, and manipulating synaptically-connected networks of neurons are limited. Monosynaptic tracing, or the gated replication and spread of a deletion-mutant rabies virus to label neurons directly connected to a targeted population of starting neurons1, is the most widely-used technique for mapping neural circuitry, but the rapid cytotoxicity of first-generation rabies viral vectors has restricted its use almost entirely to anatomical applications. We recently introduced double-deletion-mutant second-generation rabies viral vectors, showing that they have little or no detectable toxicity and are efficient means of retrogradely targeting neurons projecting to an injection site2, but they have not previously been shown to be capable of gated replication in vivo, the basis of monosynaptic tracing. Here we present a complete second-generation system for labeling direct inputs to genetically-targeted neuronal populations with minimal toxicity, using double-deletion-mutant rabies viruses. Spread of the viruses requires complementation of both of the deleted viral genes in trans in the starting postsynaptic cells; suppressing the expression of these viral genes following an initial period of viral replication, using the Tet-Off system, reduces toxicity to the starting cells without decreasing the efficiency of viral spread. Using longitudinal two- photon imaging of live monosynaptic tracing in visual cortex, we found that 94.4% of all labeled cells, and an estimated 92.3% of starting cells, survived for the full twelve-week course of imaging. Two-photon imaging of calcium responses in labeled networks of neurons in vivo over ten weeks showed that labeled neurons’ visual response properties remained stable for as long as we followed them. This nontoxic labeling of inputs to genetically-targeted neurons in vivo is a long-held goal in neuroscience, with transformative applications including nonperturbative transcriptomic and epigenomic profiling, long-term functional imaging and behavioral studies, and optogenetic and chemogenetic manipulation of synaptically-connected neuronal networks over the lifetimes of experimental animals.
Monosynaptic tracing using rabies virus is an important technique in neuroscience, allowing brain-wide labeling of neurons directly presynaptic to a targeted neuronal population. A 2017 article reported the development of a noncytotoxic version—a major advance—based on attenuating the rabies virus by the addition of a destabilization domain to the C terminus of a viral protein. However, this modification did not appear to hinder the ability of the virus to spread between neurons. We analyzed two viruses provided by the authors and show here that both were mutants that had lost the intended modification, explaining the paper's paradoxical results. We then made a virus that actually did have the intended modification in at least the majority of virions and found that it did not spread efficiently under the conditions described in the original paper, namely, without an exogenous protease being expressed in order to remove the destabilization domain. We found that it did spread when the protease was supplied, although this also appeared to result in the deaths of most source cells by 3 wk postinjection. We conclude that the new approach is not robust but that it could become a viable technique given further optimization and validation.
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