Chen Chen, Liu Yuanming, Cang Jianhua
Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA.
Department of Biology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA.
iScience. 2025 Mar 11;28(4):112194. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.112194. eCollection 2025 Apr 18.
Recent studies have revealed diverse neuron types in the superior colliculus (SC), a midbrain structure critical for sensorimotor transformation. Here, as an important step toward studying the function of these subtypes, we characterize 10 transgenic mouse lines based on a recently published molecular atlas of the superficial SC. We show that Cre or fluorescence expression in some lines corresponds specifically to certain transcriptomic neuron types. These include two GENSAT lines that have been used to target morphological cell types in the SC and three knockin lines. In contrast, such a correspondence is not seen in other tested mice. Importantly, the expression pattern of marker genes in all these lines is highly consistent with the molecular atlas. Together, our studies support a correlation between morphological and transcriptomic neuron types, identify useful lines for targeting SC neuron types genetically, and demonstrate the validity of the single-cell transcriptomics data.
近期研究揭示了上丘（SC）中存在多种神经元类型，上丘是中脑的一个对感觉运动转换至关重要的结构。在此，作为研究这些亚型功能的重要一步，我们基于最近发表的浅表SC分子图谱对10个转基因小鼠品系进行了表征。我们表明，某些品系中的Cre或荧光表达与特定的转录组神经元类型特异性对应。其中包括两个已用于靶向SC中形态学细胞类型的GENSAT品系和三个敲入品系。相比之下，在其他测试小鼠中未观察到这种对应关系。重要的是，所有这些品系中标记基因的表达模式与分子图谱高度一致。总之，我们的研究支持形态学和转录组神经元类型之间的相关性，确定了用于基因靶向SC神经元类型的有用品系，并证明了单细胞转录组学数据的有效性。
