1. Neuroscience
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Brain-wide cellular resolution imaging of Cre transgenic zebrafish lines for functional circuit-mapping

  1. Kathryn M Tabor
  2. Gregory D Marquart
  3. Christopher Hurt
  4. Trevor S Smith
  5. Alexandra K Geoca
  6. Ashwin A Bhandiwad
  7. Abhignya Subedi
  8. Jennifer L Sinclair
  9. Hannah M Rose
  10. Nicholas F Polys
  11. Harold A Burgess  Is a corresponding author
  1. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, United States
  2. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, United States
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Cite this article as: eLife 2019;8:e42687 doi: 10.7554/eLife.42687

Abstract

Decoding the functional connectivity of the nervous system is facilitated by transgenic methods that express a genetically encoded reporter or effector in specific neurons; however, most transgenic lines show broad spatiotemporal and cell-type expression. Increased specificity can be achieved using intersectional genetic methods which restrict reporter expression to cells that co-express multiple drivers, such as Gal4 and Cre. To facilitate intersectional targeting in zebrafish, we have generated more than 50 new Cre lines, and co-registered brain expression images with the Zebrafish Brain Browser, a cellular resolution atlas of 264 transgenic lines. Lines labeling neurons of interest can be identified using a web-browser to perform a 3D spatial search (zbbrowser.com). This resource facilitates the design of intersectional genetic experiments and will advance a wide range of precision circuit-mapping studies.

Data availability

Registered individual confocal brain scans have been deposited in Dryad https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tk467n8

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Kathryn M Tabor

    Division of Developmental Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  2. Gregory D Marquart

    Division of Developmental Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9811-5372

  3. Christopher Hurt

    Division of Developmental Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  4. Trevor S Smith

    Division of Developmental Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  5. Alexandra K Geoca

    Division of Developmental Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  6. Ashwin A Bhandiwad

    Division of Developmental Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  7. Abhignya Subedi

    Division of Developmental Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  8. Jennifer L Sinclair

    Division of Developmental Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  9. Hannah M Rose

    Division of Developmental Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  10. Nicholas F Polys

    Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  11. Harold A Burgess

    Division of Developmental Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, United States
    For correspondence
    burgessha@mail.nih.gov
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1966-7801

Funding

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1ZIAHD008884-04)

  • Harold A Burgess

Virginia Tech Advanced Research Computing (NA)

  • Nicholas F Polys

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (#15-039) of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Indira M Raman, Northwestern University, United States

Publication history

  1. Received: October 8, 2018
  2. Accepted: February 7, 2019
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: February 8, 2019 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: February 27, 2019 (version 2)

Copyright

This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

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