Studying the structural alterations occurring during diseases of the nervous system requires imaging heterogeneous cell populations at the circuit, cellular and subcellular levels. 2Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain.1Institut de Neurociències, Departament de Bioquímica i Biologia Molecular, Facultat de Medicina, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.This work will allow scientists to tease apart how we produce complex behaviors and give researchers new tools to treat brain diseases.Arnaldo Parra-Damas 1,2* Carlos A. This project is part of a multi-institutional effort, the NIH-funded BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network, to compile an atlas of every cell in human, mouse, and non-human primate brains. Similarly, to understand how the brain works, you have to look at all the different aspects of each neuron, including each neuron's location in the brain, gene expression, and connection to other neurons." To truly understand how a car works, "you look at all aspects, from the physical and electrical properties to the way each piece links together. Sun, a former research technician in Zador's lab and now a New York University graduate student, compares the brain to a car. So compared to anyone that doesn't have those receptors, they will respond differently to certain signals."īARseq2 brings brain structure and function together. For example, if a neuron expresses certain receptors, you will be able to respond to whatever those receptors receive. "These differences in gene expression usually reflect something that these neurons are doing. The latest generation of this tool, called BARseq2, adds a step to analyze a couple dozen natural neural genes through sequencing chemistry similar to what is used to light up artificial RNA barcodes. You can label like tens of thousands of neurons, all at the same time, and you can still distinguish which axon comes from which neuron." You can sequence the barcode to read out where that neuron sends its projection. "The idea here is that instead of labeling each neuron with a fluorescent dye, we fill it up with a unique RNA sequence, and we call this an RNA barcode. Chen, a postdoc in Zador's lab, explains how their tool, BARseq, is different: Many brain mapping tools allow neuroscientists to examine a handful of individual neurons at a time, for example by injecting them with dye. Their technique, called BARseq2, labels brain cells with short RNA sequences called "barcodes," allowing the researchers to trace thousands of brain circuits simultaneously. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Alle Davis and Maxine Harrison Professor of Neurosciences Anthony Zador, and colleagues Xiaoyin Chen and Yu-Chi Sun, published a new technique in Nature Neuroscience for figuring out connections using genetic tags. There are billions of neurons in the human brain, and scientists want to know how they are connected.
view moreĬredit: Chen and Sun/Zador lab, CSHL/2021 Image: In this field of brain cells, each color is a unique neuron stained for a particular snippet of RNA-or 'barcode.' This technique, called BARseq2, allows scientists to study thousands of cells at a time with their natural connections intact.
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