BRAIN CONNECTS: PatchLink, scalable tools for integrating connectomes, projectomes, and transcriptomes

National Institute Of Neurological Disorders And Stroke

Investigators

Abstract

The Cellular Neurophysiology Section (CNS) studies the physiology of neurons located in the midbrain dopamine system as well as their circuit integration in the basal ganglia. We collaborate with the Allen Institute to study dopaminergic neuron subpopulations and the circuits that innervate these neurons. Our collaborative project is to characterize dopaminergic and GABAergic neuron cell populations within the ventral tegmental area and substantia nigra in the context of their cellular neurophysiology, morphology, and single-cell transcriptomic properties (Patch-seq). The overall goal of the grant is to establish a Patch-seq data acquisition pipeline in the Khaliq lab at the NINDS Intramural Research Program. This year, we have made progress on this goal. We have established a cell recording setup in our laboratory using custom software generated by the Allen Institute. We sent a postdoctoral fellow to the Allen Institute for on-site training on how to use the acquisition software and perform the Patch-seq procedure in our own laboratory. We have also purchased and set up the equipment and reagents necessary to perform the Patch-seq procedures. Lastly, we performed Patch-seq experiments where we extracted the nuclei of cells from a number of experiments and sent these materials to the Allen Institute for transcriptomic processing. We have also received Patch-seq results suggesting that our approach and technique is successful.