Mesoscopic analysis of GABAergic marker expression in acetylcholine neurons in the whole mouse brain

TL;DR

This study investigates how GABA co-transmission affects acetylcholine neurons in the mouse brain, revealing that most ACh neurons do not release GABA despite some being able to produce it.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel workflow combining tissue clearing, light-sheet microscopy, and machine learning to analyze ACh neuron heterogeneity across the whole mouse brain.

Findings

ACh neuron counts remain unchanged in the absence of vGAT.

ACh/Gad2 neurons are numerous in both the fore- and hindbrain.

ACh/vGAT neurons are limited to a subset of brain regions.

Abstract

In the central nervous system, acetylcholine (ACh) neurons coordinate neural network activity required for higher brain functions, such as attention, learning, and memory, as well as locomotion. Disturbances in cholinergic signaling have been described in many diseases of the developing and mature brain. Interestingly, ACh neurons can co-transmit GABA to support essential roles in brain function. However, the contributions of ACh/GABA co-transmission to brain function remain unclear. This underscores the need to better understand the heterogeneity of ACh neurons, particularly the sub-population of ACh neurons co-expressing GABAergic markers. We used various combinations of transgenic mouse lines to systematically label ACh neuron populations positive for different GABAergic markers in the brain. We developed a workflow combining tissue clearing, light-sheet fluorescence microscopy, and machine learning to image entire mouse brain hemispheres followed by quantification of ACh neurons throughout the brain. With this approach, we assessed whether (1) the loss of GABA co-transmission in ACh neurons, through the genetic ablation of the vesicular GABA transporter in ACh neurons, reduces ACh neuron count and (2) quantified ACh and ACh/GABA neuron sub-populations in the brain. Our results suggest that GABA co-transmission from ACh neurons is not required to maintain the regular ACh neuron count in the brain. Furthermore, we report that a large subset of ACh neurons can potentially synthesize GABA by co-expressing the marker Gad2. However, most of these ACh neurons do not express vGAT, which would enable these neurons to release GABA. Based on the overlap of fluorescent reporter signals, we propose that GABA co-transmission likely occurs only from a small population of ACh neurons restricted to few brain nuclei.

•ACh neuron counts remain unchanged in the absence of vGAT•ACh/Gad2 neurons are numerous in both the fore- and hindbrain•ACh/vGAT neurons are limited to a subset of brain regions

ACh neuron counts remain unchanged in the absence of vGAT

ACh/Gad2 neurons are numerous in both the fore- and hindbrain

ACh/vGAT neurons are limited to a subset of brain regions

Molecular biology; Molecular neuroscience; Neuroanatomy

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