Fig. 1: Engineered AAV2/5 Cre-FLEx system infects striatal astrocytes specifically in the adult mouse brain. | Nature Communications

Fig. 1: Engineered AAV2/5 Cre-FLEx system infects striatal astrocytes specifically in the adult mouse brain.

From: Gene therapy conversion of striatal astrocytes into GABAergic neurons in mouse models of Huntington’s disease

Fig. 1

a Schematic diagram of our engineered AAV2/5 constructs (GFAP::Cre and FLEx-CAG::mCherry-P2A-mCherry) used to target astrocytes specifically with GFAP promoter-controlled expression of Cre recombinase, which in turn will activate the expression of mCherry. b Cre recombinase (red) was detected specifically in GFAP+ astrocytes (green) at 7 days post viral injection (dpi) of AAV2/5-GFAP::Cre. White arrowheads indicate astrocytes with Cre expression. Scale bar: 50 µm. c Tiled confocal image of the striatum after control AAV mCherry injection (top left) (30 dpi), and the overlaid images of mCherry with a variety of glial markers or neuronal marker (NeuN). S100β, GFAP, and glutamine synthetase (GS) are markers for astrocytes; Olig2 for oligodendrocytes; NG2 for NG2 expressing cells; and Iba1 for microglia. Arrowheads indicate some colocalized cells. Scale bar: 0.5 mm for the top tiled low-magnification images, and 50 µm for the high magnification images. d Percentage of mCherry+ cells in colocalization with different cell markers in the striatum. Note that the majority of control mCherry virus-infected cells were astrocytes. Data are shown as mean ± SEM.

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