Labeling Fine Morphology of Neurons with Specific Cell Types and Specific Projection Using Vesicular Stomatitis Virus

Neuron is the basic unit of nervous system. Studying the fine morphology of neurons is crucial for understanding the structure of neural network and the manner of neural information processing. At present, effective methods to visualize fine morphology of neurons with specific cell types and specific projection are still lacking. In this paper, a recombination vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) was designed, with nucleoprotein gene mutated and glycoprotein gene deleted. The virus, VSV-△G-NR7A-EGFP, was capable of highlighted morphology of the labelled neurons in a short time. With specific transgenic animals and a helper virus rAAV-EF1α-Dio-Bfp-Tva, it was demonstrated that, a further constructed virus VSV-△G-EnvA-NR7A-EGFP could sparsely and specifically label D2R neurons with nucleus accumbens-lateral hypothalamus (NAc-LH) projection and dopamine neurons with ventral tegmental area (VTA)-NAc projection.