Transcriptomic correlates of neuron electrophysiological diversity

Here we present an approach to understand electrophysiological diversity through gene expression by integrating pooled- and single-cell transcriptomics with intracellular electrophysiology. Using neuroinformatics methods, we compiled a brain-wide dataset of 34 neuron types with paired gene expression and intrinsic electrophysiological features from publically accessible sources, the largest such collection to date.

We identified 420 genes whose expression levels significantly correlated with variability in one or more of 11 physiological parameters. We next trained statistical models to infer cellular features from multivariate gene expression. Such models were predictive of gene-electrophysiological relationships in an independent collection of 12 visual cortex cell types from the Allen Institute, suggesting that these correlations might reflect general principles relating expression patterns to phenotypic diversity across very different cell types.