RESEARCH ARTICLE Emergence of non-canonical parvalbumin- containing interneurons in hippocampus of a murine model of type I lissencephaly Tyler G Ekins1,2, Vivek Mahadevan1, Yajun Zhang1, James A D’Amour1,3, Gu¨ lcan Akgu¨ l1, Timothy J Petros1, Chris J McBain1* 1Program in Developmental Neurobiology, Eunice Kennedy-Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, United States; 2NIH-Brown University Graduate Partnership Program, Providence, United States; 3Postdoctoral Research Associate Training Program, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, Bethesda, United States Abstract Type I lissencephaly is a neuronal migration disorder caused by haploinsuffiency of the PAFAH1B1 (mouse: Pafah1b1) gene and is characterized by brain malformation, developmental delays, and epilepsy. Here, we investigate the impact of Pafah1b1 mutation on the cellular migration, morphophysiology, microcircuitry, and transcriptomics of mouse hippocampal CA1 parvalbumin-containing inhibitory interneurons (PV+INTs). We find that WT PV+INTs consist of two physiological subtypes (80% fast-spiking (FS), 20% non-fast-spiking (NFS)) and four morphological subtypes. We find that cell-autonomous mutations within interneurons disrupts morphophysiological development of PV+INTs and results in the emergence of a non-canonical ‘intermediate spiking (IS)’ subset of PV+INTs. We also find that now dominant IS/NFS cells are prone to entering depolarization block, causing them to temporarily lose the ability to initiate action potentials and control network excitation, potentially promoting seizures. Finally, single-cell nuclear RNAsequencing of PV+INTs revealed several misregulated genes related to morphogenesis, cellular excitability, and synapse formation. *For correspondence:
[email protected] Competing interests: The Introduction authors declare that no Excitation in neocortical and hippocampal circuits is balanced by a relatively small (10–15%) yet competing interests exist.