Intraventricular Transplantation of Engineered Neuronal Precursors for In Vivo Neuroarchitecture Studies

The overall goal of this technique is the assessment of the effect of gene expression manipulations on cortical neuronal architecture in vivo. Our first key advantage of this procedure over those based on a neutral electroporation, is the fine control of gene expression levels. Specifically, this integrated pipeline enables the in vivo evaluation of defect, exalted by small changes in gene expression on the control of neuronal cytoarchitecture.

Moreover, the pair structure of the transplantation test allows for a huge reduction in animal numbers necessary to obtain statistically significant results. The technique takes advantage of a precursor pool originating from Tau EGFP transgenic embryos. This pool is subdivided into two sub pools that are alternatively infected with two lentiviral mixes.