Rabies virus pseudotyped with CVS-N2C glycoprotein as a powerful tool for retrograde neuronal network tracing

Abstract Background: Efficient viral vectors for mapping and manipulating long projection neuronal circuits are crucial in brain structural and functional studies. The glycoprotein gene-deleted SAD strain rabies virus pseudotyped with the N2C glycoprotein (SAD-RV(ΔG)-N2C(G)) shows high neuro-tropism in cell culture, but its in vivo retrograde infection efficiency and neuro-tropism have not been systematically characterized. Methods: SAD-RV(ΔG)-N2C(G) and two other broadly used retrograde tracers, SAD-RV(ΔG)-B19(G) and rAAV2-retro were respectively injected into the VTA or DG in C57BL/6 mice. The neuron numbers labeled across the whole brain regions were counted and analyzed by measuring the retrograde infection efficiencies and tropisms of these viral tools. The labeled neural types were analyzed using fluorescence immunohistochemistry or GAD67-GFP mice. Result: We found that SAD-RV (ΔG)-N2C (G) enhanced the infection efficiency of long-projecting neurons by ~ 10 times but with very similar neuro-tropism, compared with SAD-RV (ΔG)-B19(G). On the other hand, SAD-RV(ΔG)-N2C(G) showed comparable infection efficiency with rAAV2-retro, but had a more restricted diffusion range, and broader tropism to different types and regions of long-projecting neuronal populations. Conclusions: These results demonstrate that SAD-RV(ΔG)-N2C(G) can serve as an effective retrograde vector for studying neuronal circuits. Key words：Viral vector, N2C Glycoprotein, Neuronal circuits, Retrograde tracin