An orthogonal TRAP enables intersectional genetic access to activated neurons in the mouse brain

The study of neural circuits has been greatly enabled by methods for obtaining genetic access to activated neurons. However, these approaches typically tag neurons based on their response to only a single stimulus, which limits the ability to define precise subpopulations of cells. Here we describe an approach (X-TRAP) in which the activity-dependent expression of Flp recombinase is gated by branaplam, a small molecule that triggers splicing of the X-ON switch. We show that X-TRAP knock-in mice exhibit undetectable Flp recombination in the absence of drug and that branaplam treatment results in robust induction of recombination selectively in neurons that express FOS. Moreover, we show that X-TRAP is orthogonal to the widely-used TRAP system, such that these two approaches can be used in the same animal to label cells with Cre and Flp recombination in response to two different stimuli. We apply this strategy to map neural circuits that control food intake. This approach for intersectional, activity-dependent genetic labeling should enhance our ability to identify the neural correlates of behavior.