What is the Brainbow technique?
Brainbow is a genetic cell-labeling technique where hundreds of different hues can be generated by stochastic and combinatorial expression of a few spectrally distinct fluorescent proteins.
What is a Brainbow mouse?
“Brainbow” mice are engineered with a gene that includes three different fluorescent proteins, but only one color is actually expressed from each copy of the DNA construct. Depending on what DNA is excised, a different color results.
Who created Brainbow?
Lichtman) are the happy result of the search to visualize the brain’s circuits at work in a living animal. The Brainbow was a revelation that enabled scientists for the first time to study neurons in live tissue. The method was first developed by Harvard’s Joshua Sanes and Jeff Lichtman and announced in Nature in 2007.
How do Confetti mice work?
The Confetti mouse is a loxP-based reporter system in which Cre dependent DNA recombination causes the permanent expression of one of several possible fluorescent proteins in a stochastic manner2. The crossing of a tissue-specific Cre strain with the R26R-Confetti strain provides the specificity of labeling.
How is brainbow mouse made?
Brainbow is implemented in vivo by crossing two transgenic organism strains: one that expresses the Cre protein and another that has been transfected with several versions of a loxP/XFP construct.
How does Cre recombinase work?
Cre recombinase proteins bind to the first and last 13 bp regions of a lox site forming a dimer. This dimer then binds to a dimer on another lox site to form a tetramer. The double stranded DNA is cut at both loxP sites by the Cre protein. The strands are then rejoined with DNA ligase in a quick and efficient process.
Who invented the Golgi stain?
Camillo Golgi
The black reaction, invented in 1873 by Camillo Golgi (1843-1926, was the first technique to reveal neurons in their entirety, i.e. with all their processes.
What is the difference between the nissl stain and the Golgi stain?
The Nissl and Golgi stains are stains for differentiating cell structures. Nissl stains RNA so cell bodies stain blue/purple. Ribosomal RNA also picks up the stain. Golgi stains the entire cell membrane black, yet only stains ~1 in 500 cells.
What is the purpose of optogenetics?
Optogenetics is a biological technique to control the activity of neurons or other cell types with light. This is achieved by expression of light-sensitive ion channels, pumps or enzymes specifically in the target cells.
What is the point of optogenetics?
Optogenetics is a method for controlling a neuron’s activity using light and genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is a process where scientists change the information in the genetic code (the blueprints) of a living thing.
Are there Brainbow 3.2 founder Line 7 mice?
After removal, the mice will be available from cryorecovery. These Brainbow 3.2 (founder line 7) mice allow labeling of individual neuronal types (including neurons of spinal cord, cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum and retina) with approximately 90 distinguishable color variations in cre recombined cells.
Are there any Brainbow 3.2 transgenic mice?
These Brainbow 3.2 (founder line 7) mice allow labeling of individual neuronal types (including neurons of spinal cord, cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum and retina) with approximately 90 distinguishable color variations in cre recombined cells. These Thy1-Brainbow 3.2 (line 7) transgenic mice are viable and fertile.
What happens when only one Brainbow construct is present?
If only one copy of the Brainbow construct is present in cells, the recombination choice leads to mutually exclusive expression of XFPs. For example, cell A will express one XFP, whereas cell B will express a different XFP.
How many invertible units are there in Brainbow 2.1?
In Brainbow-2.1, two invertible units are positioned in tandem, offering additional excision and inversion options, and yielding a total of four expression possibilities. View larger version: In this window In a new window