RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Snca-GFP Knock-In Mice Reflect Patterns of Endogenous Expression and Pathological Seeding JF eneuro JO eNeuro FD Society for Neuroscience SP ENEURO.0007-20.2020 DO 10.1523/ENEURO.0007-20.2020 VO 7 IS 4 A1 Anna Caputo A1 Yuling Liang A1 Tobias D. Raabe A1 Angela Lo A1 Mian Horvath A1 Bin Zhang A1 Hannah J. Brown A1 Anna Stieber A1 Kelvin C. Luk YR 2020 UL http://www.eneuro.org/content/7/4/ENEURO.0007-20.2020.abstract AB α-Synuclein (aSyn) participates in synaptic vesicle trafficking and synaptic transmission but its misfolding is also strongly implicated in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and other neurodegenerative synucleinopathies in which misfolded aSyn accumulates in different regions of the central and peripheral nervous systems. Although increased aSyn expression levels or altered aggregation propensities likely underlie familial PD with SNCA amplification or mutations, the majority of synucleinopathies arise sporadically, indicating that disease can develop under normal levels of wild-type (wt) aSyn. We report here the development and characterization of a mouse line expressing an aSyn-green fluorescence protein (GFP) fusion protein under the control of native Snca regulatory elements. Regional and subcellular localization of the aSyn-GFP fusion protein in brains and peripheral tissues of knock-in (KI) mice are indistinguishable from that of wt littermates. Importantly, similar to wt aSyn, aSyn-GFP disperses from synaptic vesicles on membrane depolarization, indicating that the tag does not alter normal aSyn dynamics at synapses. In addition, intracerebral injection of aSyn pre-formed fibrils into KI mice induced the formation of aSyn-GFP inclusions with a distribution pattern similar to that observed in wt mice, albeit with attenuated kinetics because of the GFP-tag. We anticipate that this new mouse model will facilitate in vitro and in vivo studies requiring in situ detection of endogenous aSyn, thereby providing new insights into aSyn function in health and disease.