At these concentrations, P0 injection consistently

yielded sparse transduction in which only a few isolated neurons were transduced, ideal for studying the cell-intrinsic effects of a virally-delivered transgene. Thus, the titer of both serotypes could be easily adjusted to control transgene mosaicism in the brain, but over a greater range for AAV8 than AAV1. In some experimental settings, it would be helpful to express different transgenes in neighboring cells. We tested whether this could be achieved by co-injecting a mixture of two viruses encoding different fluorescent proteins. We examined the expression attained by combining two selleck viruses of the same serotype (AAV8-YFP with AAV8-tdTomato), as well as viruses of different serotypes (AAV1-YFP with AAV8-tdTomato). All three vectors (AAV8-YFP, AAV1-YFP, and AAV8-tdTomato) use the same promoter and inverted terminal

repeats. Injection of either identical or different serotypes resulted in widespread transduction of both injected vectors. Co-injection of viruses with the same serotype resulted in more cells that were transduced SB203580 purchase by both viruses (n = 8, Figs 7A–C), whereas co-injection of different serotypes yielded more cells that were transduced by one or the other virus (n = 4, Figs 7D–F). AAV1 and AAV8 preferentially targeted different layers of the cortex, resulting in greater transduction of neurons in the deep

layers with AAV8 and neurons in superficial layers with AAV1. The pattern of expression for each virus was similar regardless of whether isothipendyl it was used alone or in combination, suggesting that different virions sharing the same capsid proteins, promoters, and inverted terminal repeats act independently in vivo. We next tested whether the density of transduction could be independently controlled when two viruses were co-injected as it could for one virus alone. Co-injection of two viruses of the same serotype each at low titer (4.0 × 108 particles/hemisphere of each AAV8-YFP and AAV8-tdTomato) resulted in sparse expression of both viruses and, as a result, fewer dually-transduced cells compared with titers ≥ 2.0 × 109 particles/hemisphere (n = 4, Figs 8A–D). Co-injection of two viruses of different serotypes and titers (2.0 × 109 particles of AAV1-YFP and 8.0 × 108 particles of AAV8-tdTomato per hemisphere) also yielded a largely non-overlapping pattern of viral expression, with the higher titer virus displaying correspondingly more dense transduction than the lower titer virus (n = 6, Figs 8E–H). Thus, both serotype and titer can be adjusted as needed to generate varying transduction patterns for each viral transgene. One potential application for mosaic viral transgenesis is the generation of mice in which neighboring neurons differ only in their expression of a particular gene of interest.