Profiling translation in the nervous system

Regulation at the level of translation is critical for functions in the nervous system, such as the formation of cell-type specific proteomes or plastic changes in neural circuits. While current knowledge of the translatome is relatively limited compared to transcriptome, a growing array of tools to analyze translation is becoming available. In this review, we introduce techniques for profiling translation on a genome-wide scale with a special emphasis on cell-type specific analyses in the nervous system. This includes polysome-profiling-seq, Translating Ribosome Affinity Purification (TRAP)-seq and ribosome profiling (Ribo-seq). We review recent advances to achieve spatial resolution of translatome analysis, such as genetic labeling of the targeted cells and cell sorting, and discuss the biological implications of translational regulation in the brain and potential future extensions.