Meeting Abstract
P3.180 Monday, Jan. 6 15:30 Single-neuron transcriptome profiling of the memory-forming circuit in the sea slug Aplysia californica BOSTWICK, C*; YANG, Q; FODOR, A; MOROZ, T; KOHN, A; HAWKINS, RD; MOROZ, LL; Univ. of Florida; Columbia Univ.; Univ. of Florida; Univ. of Florida; Univ. of Florida; Columbia Univ.; Univ. of Florida cbostwick87@gmail.com
Aplysia californica is a well-established model for learning and memory. It possesses a simple memory circuit, the gill and siphon withdrawal reflex. Here, the monosynaptic connections between the sensory and motor neurons are fundamental sites of neuroplasticity underlying associative and non-associative forms of learning such as sensitization, habituation, and classical conditioning. The diversity of molecular components that comprise this sensory-motor synapse is largely unknown. For the first time transcriptomes of single sensory, motor and interneurons were sequenced. We developed a novel protocol to identify and quantify >99% of all RNAs from individual neurons. These RNA-seq data were assembled, then annotated using the gene models from the recently sequenced Aplysia genome, GenBank’s non-redundant protein database, Uniprot’s Swiss-Prot, Gene Ontology (GO), PFAM, and KEGG pathways. When the annotated transcripts from each cell type were compared to the combined CNS/neuronal Aplysia transcriptome, we discovered a multitude of transcripts were differentially expressed. This supports the hypothesis that each of these neuron types has a unique molecular signature. In the sensory neurons, one of the most abundant transcripts is sensorin, which is even more highly expressed than beta-tubulin. Some of the differentially expressed transcripts include: several neuropeptides, two-pore potassium/cationic channels, Slack potassium channel, HCN channels, taurine transporter, NCAM, NMDAR, iGluRs, and non-coding RNAs. These expression data are integral to deciphering the genomic bases of neuronal identity, synaptic transmission, and plasticity within this memory-forming circuit
