An innovative brain imaging technique, MAPseq, marks cells by genetic "bar codes".

A team of neuroscientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and the University of Bartheser in Switzerland recently developed an innovative brain imaging technique that tracks hundreds of neuronal connections in the outer cortex of the mouse's brain.
new technology can produce more detailed images faster and more efficiently than existing methods, and costs are plummeting, helping to recognize neurodevelopmental disorders in the future.
there are 100 billion neurons in the human brain, each producing thousands of connections or synapses, which can generate tens of billions of connections.
neuroscientists know much about the role of individual neurons, but little is known about how a large number of neurons work together and generate ideas, feelings, and even behavior.
researchers often use microscopes to observe neural connections, but they are laborious and expensive.
traditional technique for identifying connections between nerve cells, known as fluorescent single neuron tracing, introduces a protein gene that produces green light into the cell to observe the connection of neurons using an optical microscope.
the team used traditional methods to track 31 neuronal connections from the visual cortex to seven other cortex regions.
new techniques, they completed connections from 591 neurons in just three weeks, which took three years to complete using the traditional method.
new technology, called MAPseq, works by genetically labeling cells.
researchers injected viruses containing randomRNA sequences into the brains of mice, and when they entered the cells, each virus expressed a unique rna sequence consisting of 30 letters or nucleotides, as well as proteins that the cells naturally transported along the axon.
proteins are designed to be combined with RNA "bar codes" and are also dragged along the axons.
then, the mice were dissected to target brain regions, and after sequencing they could see which marked neurons were connected to which region. The more neurons
connect to the target area, the more neuron "bar codes" appear in the region's sequencing data. 'This is the first time that tissue seismographs that describe long-distance neurons in the cortex have helped to improve the speed of cognitive awareness of neurological disorders such as autism and schizophrenia,' said Berdond Losca, a neuroscientist at the Swiss Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology at the
.
Source: Science Daily.