A new mouse tool for studying dopaminergic neurons

Dopaminergic neurons play important roles in brain function and studying dopaminergic system has been a major field of neuroscience research. Genetically modified mice have greatly advanced research of dopaminergic neurons. However, it has been shown that dopaminergic neurons contain several subtypes expressing distinct genetic markers, and it is challenging to study genetically different subtypes of dopaminergic neurons using current mouse lines. Here, we report a newly developed Dat-ires-flp line, in which flippase gene is knocked in after the stop codon of Slc6a3 (dopamine transporter, DAT) gene. We validated this line to show that flp is specifically expressed in dopaminergic neurons, and by breeding with Cre-expressing line (i.e. Vglut2-cre) we can study a specific subpopulation of dopaminergic neurons. We expect this line will be widely used to study different subtypes of dopaminergic neurons in diverse contexts.