TY - JOUR
T1 - Cre-lox neurogenetics
T2 - 20 years of versatile applications in brain research and counting...
AU - Tsien, Joe Z.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Tsien.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Defining and manipulating specific neurons in the brain has garnered enormous interest in recent years, because such an approach is now widely recognized as crucial for deepening our understanding of how the brain works. When I started exploring the Cre-loxP recombination for brain research in the early 1990s, it was written off as a dead-end project by a young fool. Yet over the past 20 years, Cre-lox recombination-mediated neurogenetics has emerged as one of the most powerful and versatile technology platforms for cell-specific gene knockouts, transgenic overexpression, Brainbow imaging, neural pathway tracing with retrovirus and CLARITY, chemical genetics, and optogenetics. Its popularity and greater utility in neuroscience research is also largely thanks to the NIH's bold Blueprint for Neuroscience Research Initiative to launch several Cre-driver resource projects, as well as individual laboratories and private research organizations. With newly-discovered, genetically-encoded molecules that are capable of responding to sonar and magnetic stimulation, for sonogenetics or magnetogenetics, respectively, or detecting rapid voltage changes in neurons, Cre-lox neurogenetics will continue to aid brain research for years to come.
AB - Defining and manipulating specific neurons in the brain has garnered enormous interest in recent years, because such an approach is now widely recognized as crucial for deepening our understanding of how the brain works. When I started exploring the Cre-loxP recombination for brain research in the early 1990s, it was written off as a dead-end project by a young fool. Yet over the past 20 years, Cre-lox recombination-mediated neurogenetics has emerged as one of the most powerful and versatile technology platforms for cell-specific gene knockouts, transgenic overexpression, Brainbow imaging, neural pathway tracing with retrovirus and CLARITY, chemical genetics, and optogenetics. Its popularity and greater utility in neuroscience research is also largely thanks to the NIH's bold Blueprint for Neuroscience Research Initiative to launch several Cre-driver resource projects, as well as individual laboratories and private research organizations. With newly-discovered, genetically-encoded molecules that are capable of responding to sonar and magnetic stimulation, for sonogenetics or magnetogenetics, respectively, or detecting rapid voltage changes in neurons, Cre-lox neurogenetics will continue to aid brain research for years to come.
KW - Brainbow
KW - Cognition
KW - Cre recombinase
KW - Cre-loxP
KW - Learning and memory
KW - Mouse brain
KW - Neural circuits
KW - Optogenetics
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U2 - 10.3389/fgene.2016.00019
DO - 10.3389/fgene.2016.00019
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84962569849
SN - 1664-8021
VL - 7
JO - Frontiers in Genetics
JF - Frontiers in Genetics
IS - FEB
M1 - 19
ER -