Legend

(top) Vital Staining of Adult Neuromuscular Junctions in a thy1-YFP Transgenic Mouse. (a–c) The sternomastoid muscle was exposed, incubated briefly with rhodamine-a-bungarotoxin (BTX) (to label postsynaptic AChRs), and viewed with a water immersion lens. (a) YFP labels two branches of a motor axon and the motor nerve terminals they form. (b) Same field, viewed with rhodamine optics. (c) Perfect apposition of pre- and postsynaptic specializations indicates that YFP completely filled the nerve terminal. (d) Low power view of labeled NMJs in a fixed gluteus muscle from a thy1-YFP line 16 mouse. Motor axons run though an intramuscular nerve, then branch and terminate on muscle fibers. All AChR-rich postsynaptic sites are apposed by YFP-positive nerve terminals, indicating that all motoneurons supplying this muscle express the transgene.

(bottom) Four Spectrally Distinct XFPs Serve as Vital Stains in Transgenic Mice. Neuromuscular junctions from thy1-YFP line H (a), thy1-GFP line H (b), thy1-CFP line D (c), and thy1-RFP line 8 (d) transgenic mice. In each case, muscles were labeled with bungarotoxin, to confirm perfect apposition of pre- and postsynaptic specializations (data not shown).


Technique

Selective expression of red, green, yellow or cyan fluorescent proteins in neurons by oocyte DNA injection


Location

Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology and Department of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, USA


Citation

Guoping Feng, Rebecca H. Mellor, Michael Bernstein, Cynthia Keller-Peck, Quyen T. Nguyen, Mia Wallace, Jeanne M. Nerbonne, Jeff W. Lichtman, and Joshua R. Sanes, “Imaging neuronal subsets in transgenic mice expressing multiple spectral variants of GFP.” Neurotechnique 28 41–51 (2000)