Developmental, cellular, and behavioral phenotypes in a mouse model of congenital hypoplasia of the dentate gyrus

We studied conditional knockout mice in which the vast majority of dentate granule cells (DGCs) fail to develop--including nearly all DGCs in the dorsal hippocampus--secondary to eliminating Wntless (Wls) in a subset of cortical progenitors with Gfap-Cre. Bulk RNA-seq and single nuclei RNA-seq were preformed on hippocampi from adult control, Gfap-Cre;Wlsfl/+, and mutant, Gfap-cre;Wlsfl/- mice.本研究以条件性基因敲除小鼠为研究对象：该模型中绝大多数齿状回颗粒细胞（dentate granule cells, DGCs）无法正常发育，其中背侧海马体的齿状回颗粒细胞几乎完全缺失，该表型源于通过Gfap-Cre对部分皮质祖细胞内的Wntless（Wls）进行敲除。研究团队对成年对照组、Gfap-Cre;Wlsfl/+组以及突变型Gfap-cre;Wlsfl/-小鼠的海马体开展了批量RNA测序（bulk RNA-seq）与单细胞核RNA测序（single nuclei RNA-seq）。