Expression data from mouse proprioceptive sensory neuron subclasses.. Mus musculus

Proprioception relies on two main classes of proprioceptive sensory neurons (pSNs). These neurons innervate two distinct peripheral receptors in muscle, muscle spindles (MSs) or Golgi tendon organs (GTOs), and synapse onto different sets of spinal targets, but the molecular basis of their distinct pSN subtype identity remains unknown. We used microarray analysis to compare gene expression profiles between MS- and GTO- innervating proprioceptors. Overall design: We generated transgenic mice in which MS and GTO pSNs are labelled with different fluorescent proteins (see de Nooij et al., 2015 for details). We used Fluorescent Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) to isolate the MS and GTO pSN subsets from dissociated DRG from p7-10 transgenic mice. Neurons from multiple FACS experiments were pooled into three samples each for the MS and GTO pSN subset.