This will be a valuable resource for those who use rats for neuropsychopharmacological research. Until now, the use of Cre-recombinase lines for expressing either optogenetic (Boyden et al., 2005) and pharmacogenetic (Armbruster et al., 2007) tools for modulating neuronal activity and signaling was limited to mice. Rats, of course, are superior to mice for many behavioral studies relevant to the pathogenesis and treatment of schizophrenia.

Now, Witten et al. (from the Deisseroth lab) provide rats which will allow for the Cre-mediated expression of a variety of genes. For this study, they utilized adeno-associated viral constructs, which allow for Cre-mediated expression of opsins (AAV-DIO; Tsai et al., 2009), although these rats should be useful for expression of nearly any protein.

References:

Boyden ES, Zhang F, Bamberg E, Nagel G, Deisseroth K. Millisecond-timescale, genetically targeted optical control of neural activity. Nat Neurosci . 2005 Sep 1 ; 8(9):1263-8. Abstract

Armbruster BN, Li X, Pausch MH, Herlitze S, Roth BL. Evolving the lock to fit the key to create a family of G protein-coupled receptors potently activated by an inert ligand. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A . 2007 Mar 20 ; 104(12):5163-8. Abstract

Tsai HC, Zhang F, Adamantidis A, Stuber GD, Bonci A, de Lecea L, Deisseroth K. Phasic firing in dopaminergic neurons is sufficient for behavioral conditioning. Science . 2009 May 22 ; 324(5930):1080-4. Abstract

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