If I was to hypothetically inject a retrograde AAV into the spinal cord, would I selectively infect the neurons that synapse there or would my AAV be picked up by axons that are passing through my injection area?
I feel like the cleanest way to address this would be to inject an anterograde Cre-carrying virus into my ROI in the brain and inject a Cre-dependent retrograde AAV into the spinal cord but I wanted to know what was the likelihood that I would infect passing axons without using a cre/lox system.
this is an actively debated question in the field. The Karpova retrograde AAV2 virus is reported by the authors to be biased toward infection at synaptic sites (Tervo et al., 2016). Our retrograde AAV9 appears to be heavily biased for synaptic infection (Commisso et al., 2018). AAV5 has been reported to be retrogradely infectious only for selected tracts (reported by simon rumpel a few years back). On the other hand, native AAV1 and AAV2 seem to be able to infect long axons also in white matter tracts (see the report by the group of Ozdinler). To this respect, Rabies is a good alternative, since it is known to be strongly synaptic. If you want to test the viruses yourself, we are available to send test aliquots...
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