Journal article
Mapping and analysis of the connectome of sympathetic premotor neurons in the rostral ventrolateral medulla of the rat using a volumetric brain atlas
B Dempsey, S Le, A Turner, P Bokiniec, R Ramadas, JG Bjaalie, C Menuet, R Neve, AM Allen, AK Goodchild, S McMullan
Frontiers in Neural Circuits | FRONTIERS MEDIA SA | Published : 2017
Abstract
Spinally projecting neurons in the rostral ventrolateral medulla (RVLM) play a critical role in the generation of vasomotor sympathetic tone and are thought to receive convergent input from neurons at every level of the neuraxis; the factors that determine their ongoing activity remain unresolved. In this study we use a genetically restricted viral tracing strategy to definitively map their spatially diffuse connectome. We infected bulbospinal RVLM neurons with a recombinant rabies variant that drives reporter expression in monosynaptically connected input neurons and mapped their distribution using an MRI-based volumetric atlas and a novel image alignment and visualization tool that efficie..
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Awarded by European Commission
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors thank Sid Henriksen, Mark Wronkiewicz, and Rich Pang for their assistance in the preparation of the manuscript, Elsa Mardones for providing laboratory access and equipment, and Gergely Csucs, Dmitri Darine, and Maja Puchades for providing technical assistance and advice on the use of the tool for image anchoring. pSAD 1 G-mCherry genome plasmid (Addgene 32636), pcDNA-SADB19N (Addgene 32630), pcDNA-SADB19P (Addgene 32631), pcDNA-SADB19L (Addgene 32632), and pcDNA-SADB19G (Addgene 32633) plasmidsand B7GG, EnvA-BHK and TVA-HEK cell lines were kindly provided by Professor Ed Callaway. This work was supported by grants from the Australian Research Council Discovery Scheme (DP120100920), the Australian National Health & Medical Research Council (APP1030301), The Human Brain Project through the European Union Seventh Framework Program (604102), the Norwegian Node of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) and Macquarie University. BD thanks the Adam J Berry Memorial Fund, Australian Academy of Sciences, and NIH for their support.