Bargavi Thyagarajan

TL;DR: In this paper , the authors employed rapid GABAergic neuron viral labeling plus unbiased patch-seq sampling in brain slices to define the signature morpho-electric properties of GABAergic neurons in the human neocortex.

TL;DR: A new suite of adeno-associated viral (AAV)-based genetic tools to enable genetic access to astrocytes and oligodendrocyte populations and their roles across species, disease states, and behavioral epochs is built.

Abstract: The mammalian cortex is comprised of cells classified into types according to shared properties. Defining the contribution of each cell type to the processes guided by the cortex is essential for understanding its function in health and disease. We use transcriptomic and epigenomic cortical cell-type taxonomies from mouse and human to define marker genes and putative enhancers and create a large toolkit of transgenic lines and enhancer adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) for selective targeting of cortical cell populations. We report creation and evaluation of fifteen transgenic driver lines, two reporter lines, and >1,000 different enhancer AAV vectors covering most subclasses of cortical cells. The tools reported here have been made publicly available, and along with the scaled process of tool creation, evaluation, and modification, they will enable diverse experimental strategies toward understanding mammalian cortex and brain function.