Yoshihara Yoshihiro
Laboratory for Neurobiology of Synapse, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wakoshi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
Brain Nerve. 2010 Mar;62(3):233-42.
Functional logic employed by the nervous system for coding and processing information is determined by the wiring patterns among specific types of neurons. Therefore, detailed knowledge about neuronal circuits is essential for understanding the wide range of brain functions. In our opinion, an effective and long-awaited method for analyzing the neuronal connectivity patterns would be to selectively deliver tracers to specific types of neurons and simutaneously performing transsynaptic labeling of the target neurons. A unique property of plant lectins, such as wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) have the unique property of traveling across synapses and this property has been applied in classical neuroanatomical studies in order to label various neural pathways. In 1999, we developed a novel strategy that employs WGA cDNA as a transgene in order to visualize selective and functional neural pathways. Over the last decade, this method has gained popularity; further with substantial technical improvement and refinement, this method has been successfully employed for the analysis of various neural systems such as the olfactory, visual, gustatory, somatosensory, motor, and serotonergic systems. However, a few studies that employed this method failed because of the misinterpretation of the results. In this review, I summarize the principle, application, recent progress, and caveats of the WGA transgene technology.
神经系统用于编码和处理信息的功能逻辑由特定类型神经元之间的连接模式决定。因此，详细了解神经元回路对于理解广泛的脑功能至关重要。我们认为，一种有效且期待已久的分析神经元连接模式的方法是将示踪剂选择性地递送至特定类型的神经元，并同时对目标神经元进行跨突触标记。植物凝集素，如小麦胚凝集素（WGA）具有穿越突触的独特特性，这一特性已应用于经典神经解剖学研究中，以标记各种神经通路。1999年，我们开发了一种新策略，即将WGA cDNA用作转基因来可视化选择性和功能性神经通路。在过去十年中，这种方法越来越受欢迎；进一步通过大量技术改进和完善，该方法已成功用于分析各种神经系统，如嗅觉、视觉、味觉、躯体感觉、运动和5-羟色胺能系统。然而，一些采用这种方法的研究由于对结果的错误解读而失败。在这篇综述中，我总结了WGA转基因技术的原理、应用、最新进展及注意事项。
