Original Research Article
Retrograde tracing with recombinant rabies virus reveals correlations between projection targets and dendritic architecture in layer 5 of mouse barrel cortex
Systems Neurobiology Laboratories, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, USA
A recombinant rabies virus was used as a retrograde tracer to allow complete fi lling of the axonal and dendritic arbors of identifi ed projection neurons in layer 5 of mouse primary somatosensory cortex (S1) in vivo. Previous studies have distinguished three types of layer 5 pyramids in S1: tall-tufted, tall-simple, and short. Layer 5 pyramidal neurons were retrogradely labeled from several known targets: contralateral S1, superior colliculus, and thalamus. The complete dendritic arbors of labeled cells were reconstructed to allow for unambiguous classifi cation of cell type. We confi rmed that the tall-tufted pyramids project to the superior colliculus and thalamus and that short layer 5 pyramidal neurons project to contralateral cortex, as previously described. We found that tall-simple pyramidal neurons contribute to corticocortical connections. Axonal reconstructions show that corticocortical projection neurons have a large superfi cial axonal arborization locally, while the subcortically projecting neurons limit axonal arbors to the deep layers. Furthermore, reconstructions of local axons suggest that tall-simple cell axons have extensive lateral spread while those of the short pyramids are more columnar. These differences were revealed by the ability to completely label dendritic and axonal arbors in vivo and have not been apparent in previous studies using labeling in brain slices.
Keywords: local circuits, pyramidal neuron, axonal branching, barrel cortex, rabies virus, thalamus, superior colliculus
Copyright: © 2008 Larsen, Wickersham and Callaway. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
*Correspondence: Edward M. Callaway, Systems Neurobiology Laboratories, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA; Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92039, USA. e-mail: callaway@salk.edu
Citation: Larsen DD, Wickersham IR and Callaway EM (2008) Retrograde tracing with recombinant rabies virus reveals correlations between projection targets and dendritic architecture in layer 5 of mouse barrel cortex. Front. Neural Circuits (2007) 1:5. doi:10.3389/neuro.04.005.2007
Received: 24 October 2007; paper pending published: 26 November 2007; accepted: 11 February 2008; published online: 28 March 2008.
Edited by:
Rafael Yuste, Columbia University, USA
Reviewed by:
Michael Brecht, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
Dimitri 'Mitya' Chklovskii, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA
Dimitri 'Mitya' Chklovskii, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA
*Correspondence: Edward M. Callaway, Systems Neurobiology Laboratories, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA; Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92039, USA. e-mail: callaway@salk.edu


