I recommend you to try both in a preliminar experiment injecting high titters, you will save money and time in the long term. I imagine that you will use a Cre transgenic line of mice. First, in any case, verify if your neurons of interest are infected and which is the serotype with better results. Probably, because of the high titers employed (maybe the stock, or as low as 10^12 particles/mL) you will see some inespecific infection, it depends on the quality of your Cre mice, and then you should use some dilutions (10^12, 10^11, 10^10, etc) to optimize the protocol for optimal specificity.

In any case, if you will use just one to start, i would try first the AAV8, because it has better diffusion in the brain tissue than the AAV5. However, i have use many times the serotype AAV5 and at high titters, in my Cre line, i have seen hippocampal neurons infected inespecifically.

I hope it helps you

As Miguel Ruiz recommended you, the best option (if possible) is to try both of them with different titters and expression time. If you want a local transfection I wouldn´t recommend the AAV9, although, in my point of view is most suitable for brain transfection.

If I had to choose between AAV2/5 & AAV2/8 I probably will go for the AAV2/8.

I´m adding an article made by Aschauer et al in 2013 that should be interesting for you...

Article Analysis of Transduction Efficiency, Tropism and Axonal Tran...

Good luck!

Hello Diego, nice answer.

I want yo ask you about your experience with the serotype AAV9 because i will use te serotype PHP.b, which is derived from AAV9. And also, where can i find viruses with mixed serotype? In addgene i hace found only unique serotypes, at least for DREADD-expressing viruses. Do you made the viruses by yourself?

Hi Miguel,

First of all, yes, I produce the virus by myself. If you have any questions about it, I will be more than pleased to help you.

In my case I´ve used different AAV serotypes, however, the spreading of the AAVs wasn´t an issue for my porpoise.

Although AAV9 reproduced a high brain transfection, also performs a long distance transport along the brain.

As you may know there is a novel serotype called PHPeB, which has been described to work even better comparing to PHP.B or even AAV9.

I´ve recently used it, whenever I obtain the results, I´ll contact you.

Thanks you for your answer Diego. I will use the novel serotype that you said, i have a mistake writing the answer before.

What do you mean with long distance transport? I will inyect the virus with a stereotaxic apparatus in mouse hypothalamus. Do you mean that this virus has retrograde transport or something like this, or that the difussion in the brain tissue is very good in this novel serotype?

Hi Brooke, I strongly advised using AAV9 to infect

rat hippocampus, we always got a good result with serotype 9 . But if you only got AAV5 and AAV8, AAV8 is a better choice.

You could find more information on this website:

www.genemedi.net/i/aav-packaging