Effect of depletion of Rac1 and Rac3 GTPases on gene expression in cells from the medial ganglionic eminence (MGE)

Το investigate the role of Rac1 and Rac3 GTPases in the development of MGE-derived cortical interneurons we generated a transgenic mice where both Rac1 and 3 were depleted from the medial ganglionic eminence. First we generated a conditional knockout for Rac1 (Vidaki et al. 2012) by crossing animals carrying a floxed allele of Rac1 (Rac1fl/fl) (the fourth and fifth exon of the Rac1 gene are flanked with loxP sites, Walmsley et al. 2003) to the Nkx2.1Tg(Cre) mice (Nkx2.1 transgenic Cre, Fogarty et al. 2007). The ROSA26fl-STOP-fl-YFP allele was also inserted as an independent marker (Srinivas et al. 2001). Next, we crossed the Rac1 conditional knockout with the Rac3 KO line (Corbetta et al. 2005) and obtained a mouse line where Rac1 and Rac3 were both depleted from the MGE-derived interneurons. Comparative gene expression profiling analysis of RNA-seq data for MGEs from controls, E13.5 Rac1/Rac3 wt embryos (Rac1+/+;Rac3+/+;Nkx2.1Tg(Cre);R26RYFP+/- ) and Rac1/Rac3 dmut embryos (Rac1fl/fl;Rac3-/-; Nkx2.1Tg(Cre); R26R-YFP+/- ). Triplicates of each genotype were used and each sample consisted of MGEs from 3 embryos.