In Utero Cortical Electroporation of Plasmids in the Mouse Embryo

The cerebral cortex is composed of an exquisitely complex network of interconnected neurons supporting the higher cognitive functions of the brain. Here, we provide a fully detailed, step-by-step protocol to perform in utero cortical electroporation of plasmids, a simple surgical procedure designed to manipulate gene expression in a subset of glutamatergic pyramidal cortical neurons in vivo. This method has been used to visualize defects in neuronal migration, axon projections, terminal axon branching, or dendrite and synapse development. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Courchet et al., 2013, Mairet-Coello et al., 2013 or Shimojo et al. (2015).