ION CHANNEL REPERTOIRE SHAPES EARLY SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY AND SUBTYPE IDENTITY IN DEVELOPING CORTICAL NEURONS

Cortical development emerges from coordinated interactions between gene expression programs, environmental cues, and neuronal activity. While spontaneous activity is known to support neurogenesis and circuit assembly, how molecular features of developing neurons relate to emerging activity patterns remains poorly understood.
Here, we explore whether excitatory projection neuron subtypes exhibit distinct activity-related gene expression during development, and how these molecular configurations evolve over time. Using longitudinal single-cell transcriptomic analyses, we identify dynamic and subtype-associated trajectories of ion channel expression across developing projection neuron populations. Our data demonstrate that specific ion channel repertoires are associated with distinctive intrinsic activity properties from their earliest developmental stages. Integrating genetic, pharmacological, two-photon imaging, and transcriptomic approaches, we investigate the role of the neuronal “channellome” in functional maturation and structural differentiation of selected neuronal subtypes, identifying a potential molecular link between cortical neuronal identity and early activity patterns.