Spinal interneurons and cellular engineering

Cellular engineering techniques have progressed to enable both direct modifications to gene expression and permit spatiotemporal control of genes or functional activity, making it an ideal skill set for in vivo or in vitro investigations. As the spinal cord is a densely connected tissue with vast diversity of cells, cellular engineering techniques permit investigation at various scopes of spinal populations, from cardinal classes to subtypes at various levels of the spinal cord. Here we discuss several of the fundamental cellular engineering steps required to transmit genetic material through the cell membrane, such as viral transduction, and various methods that have been used to integrate that genetic material, such as Cas9. Further, we discuss various methodologies that have been used to modulate transcription in a cell as well as modulate the activity of a given cell through optogenetic, chemogenetic, and sonogenetic means.