Ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine (DA) neurons have been implicated in reward, aversion, salience, cognition, and several neuropsychiatric disorders. Optogenetic approaches involving transgenic Cre-driver mouse lines provide powerful tools for dissecting DA-specific functions. However, the emerging complexity of VTA circuits requires Cre-driver mouse lines that restrict transgene expression to a precisely defined cell population. Because of recent work reporting that VTA DA neurons projecting to the lateral habenula release GABA, but not DA, we performed an extensive anatomical, molecular, and functional characterization of prominent DA transgenic mouse driver lines. We find that transgenes under control of the tyrosine hydroxylase, but not the dopamine transporter, promoter exhibit dramatic non-DA cell-specific expression patterns within and around VTA nuclei. Our results demonstrate how Cre expression in unintentionally targeted cells in transgenic mouse lines can confound the interpretation of supposedly cell-type-specific experiments. This Matters Arising paper is in response to Stamatakis et al. (2013), published in Neuron. See also the Matters Arising Response paper by Stuber et al. (2015), published concurrently with this Matters Arising in Neuron.

Multiple independent mutations in neuroligin genes were identified in patients with familial autism, including the R451C substitution in neuroligin-3 (NL3). Previous studies showed that NL3 R451C knock-in mice exhibited modestly impaired social behaviors, enhanced water maze learning abilities, and increased synaptic inhibition in the somatosensory cortex, and they suggested that the behavioral changes in these mice may be caused by a general shift of synaptic transmission to inhibition. Here, we confirm that NL3 R451C mutant mice behaviorally exhibit social interaction deficits and electrophysiologically display increased synaptic inhibition in the somatosensory cortex. Unexpectedly, however, we find that the NL3 R451C mutation produced a strikingly different phenotype in the hippocampus. Specifically, in the hippocampal CA1 region, the NL3 R451C mutation caused an ∼1.5-fold increase in AMPA receptor-mediated excitatory synaptic transmission, dramatically altered the kinetics of NMDA receptor-mediated synaptic responses, induced an approximately twofold up-regulation of NMDA receptors containing NR2B subunits, and enhanced longterm potentiation almost twofold. NL3 KO mice did not exhibit any of these changes. Quantitative light microscopy and EM revealed that the NL3 R451C mutation increased dendritic branching and altered the structure of synapses in the stratum radiatum of the hippocampus. Thus, in NL3 R451C mutant mice, a single point mutation in a synaptic cell adhesion molecule causes context-dependent changes in synaptic transmission; these changes are consistent with the broad impact of this mutation on murine and human behaviors, suggesting that NL3 controls excitatory and inhibitory synapse properties in a region-and circuit-specific manner.synapse formation A utism spectrum disorders (ASDs) constitute a heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental diseases with a strong genetic component (1-3). The identification of multiple ASD candidate genes that encode synaptic proteins suggested that ASDs may involve impairments in synaptic transmission (4-12). In particular, numerous mutations in neuroligins, a family of postsynaptic cell adhesion molecules, have been identified in 10,12). Consistent with the hypothesis that synaptic dysfunction contributes to ASD pathogenesis (13, 14), mouse models of two ASD-associated neuroligin mutations exhibit functional changes in synaptic transmission (15, 16).Neuroligins are not critical for the initial establishment of synapses but are required for normal synapse function (17)(18)(19)(20). Deletion of neuroligin-1 or -2 selectively impairs excitatory or inhibitory synaptic transmission, respectively (17,18,21,22), whereas at least in the somatosensory cortex, deletion of neuroligin-3 (NL3) causes no major synaptic phenotype (15). Three ASD-relevant neuroligin mutations were characterized in mouse models: the R451C substitution in NL3 (15, 23), a loss of function mutation of NL4 (24), and a point mutation that was identified in the cytoplasmic tail of NL4 in an ASD patient...

In brain, signaling mediated by cell adhesion molecules defines the identity and functional properties of synapses. The specificity of presynaptic and postsynaptic interactions that is presumably mediated by cell adhesion molecules suggests that there exists a logic that could explain neuronal connectivity at the molecular level. Despite its importance, however, the nature of such logic is poorly understood, and even basic parameters, such as the number, identity, and single-cell expression profiles of candidate synaptic cell adhesion molecules, are not known. Here, we devised a comprehensive list of genes involved in cell adhesion, and used single-cell RNA sequencing (RNAseq) to analyze their expression in electrophysiologically defined interneurons and projection neurons. We compared the cell type-specific expression of these genes with that of genes involved in transmembrane ion conductances (i.e., channels), exocytosis, and rho/rac signaling, which regulates the actin cytoskeleton. Using these data, we identified two independent, developmentally regulated networks of interacting genes encoding molecules involved in cell adhesion, exocytosis, and signal transduction. Our approach provides a framework for a presumed cell adhesion and signaling code in neurons, enables correlating electrophysiological with molecular properties of neurons, and suggests avenues toward understanding synaptic specificity.

Cholecystokinin-positive (CCK+) basket cells are a major source of perisomatic GABAergic inputs to CA1 pyramidal cells. These interneurons express high levels of presynaptic cannabinoid type 1 (CB1) receptors that mediate short-term depression of GABA release following depolarization of postsynaptic cells. However, it is not known whether GABA release from CA1 CCK+ basket cells is under tonic endocannabinoid inhibition. In paired patch-clamp recordings, action potentials in presynaptic CCK+ basket cells evoked large IPSCs with fast kinetics in pyramidal cells. The proportion of action potentials that failed to evoke GABA release varied markedly between pairs, from highly reliable to virtually silent connections. Application of the CB1 receptor antagonist AM251 (10 µM) decreased the proportion of failures, revealing a persistent suppression of synaptic transmission by CB1 receptors. However, AM251 had no significant effect on the failure rate when the calcium chelator BAPTA (10 mM) was introduced into the postsynaptic cell, indicating that the tonic inhibition of GABA release by CB1 receptors is homosynaptically controlled by the postsynaptic cell, and that it is not due to constitutive CB1 receptor activity. Application of muscarinic or metabotropic glutamate receptor agonists inhibited synaptic transmission exclusively through the release of endocannabinoids from postsynaptic cells in a manner that could not be blocked by postsynaptic BAPTA, and had no direct effect on transmission. In contrast, GABA B receptor activation directly blocked GABA release, but there was no evidence for tonic inhibition of GABA release by GABA B receptors. Neither serotonergic nor µ-opioid agonists had significant influence on GABA release from CCK+ axon terminals. These results reveal that GABA release from CA1 CCK+ basket cells is under homosynaptic tonic inhibition by endocannabinoids, and it is subject to both direct and indirect modulation by various G-protein-dependent neuromodulators.