Hi, I am interested in chemogenetically manipulating GABA cells and came across 2 genetic rat lines: VGat-IRES-cre ad Gad1-cre rat lines. I was wondering what the difference between these two lines were and if there were any functional differences in cre expression and control?
Article Lateral Hypothalamic GABAergic Neurons Encode Reward Predict...
This paper shows that the GAD1 and VGAT label largely the same population of neurons, at least in the LH.
However, this paper shows that there is some non-overlap between the GAD1 and VGAT in the LH, and that some GAD1 is seen in glutamatergic (vglut2) populations (see Fig 1f).
Article Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of the lateral hypothala...
In my opinion the VGAT marker is a bit better as it suggests the GABA is actually getting packaged into vesicles as opposed to just getting converted from glutamate. However, I am more used to mice so there might be some issues related to Cre specificity in rats for the VGAT line, these might be dirty secrets that go unpublished.
I think ideally you could do some pilot experiments in the brain region you are actually going to conduct your research in to determine the extent of overlap and if there is anything crazy going on with either line (e.g., expression of cre-dependent virus in cortical neurons of a vgat-cre rat). Then, you could decide which is better or if there is no difference.
Let me know if you need more help with this!
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