A spinal opsin controls early neural activity and drives a behavioral light response

Purpose: using RNA-seq as a screening tool to determine candidate genes of interest within a genetically defined neural subpopulation in the zebrafish embryonic spinal cord. Results: The early embryonic spinal cord displays patterns of spontaneous activity that generate the earliest motor behavior in the zebrafish. We show the behavior and the neural activity to be inhibited by environmental levels of light. Since at these young ages the fish is blind, and since restricted illumination patterns on the trunk of the fish can elicit a photo-response, we hypothesized that the photo-inhibition is an intrinsic property of the active central pattern generator network within the spinal cord. We FACS-isolated cells from this network as well as those from a panneuronal population and sequenced mRNAs. Through differential expression analysis we identified vertebrate ancient long opsin a as a candidate and then further validated its function in the circuit through knockdown and rescue experiments. Overall design: RNA sequencing of 2 FACS purified neural populations from zebrafish spinal cord.

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Friedmann D, Hoagland A, Berlin S, Isacoff EY