Cell: For the first time, scientists have successfully mapped the brain's connections using DNA barcodes.

July 19, 2020 // In a recent study published in the international journal Cell, scientists from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and others successfully mapped remote connections between different regions of the brain using DNA sequencing techniques, a new method that significantly reduces the cost of mapping a wide range of brain connections compared to traditional microscope-based methodsPhoto Source: DrLongwen Huang, researcher at Xiaoyin Chen, Zador lab/CSHL., says neuroscientists need anatomical maps to understand how information flows from one region to another, mapping cell connections in different parts of the brain (i.e., brain connection groups, connectome) to help reveal how the nervous system processes information, and how faulty wiring induces other diseases such as mental illness, which is expensive and expensiveTypically, researchers use fluorescent labels to track the path of neurons that highlight how individual cells find and connect their targets through intricate neural networks, but the fluorescent label palette for this work is often very limited, with researchers injecting dyes of different colors into 2-3 areas of the brain and then tracking the connections in those areas; researchers can repeat the process and target new areas, and visually observe additional connections to develop a comprehensive brain connection map that requires a few hundred timesThe researchers say the technique, called BRICseq (whole-brain edicomatic sequencing, brain-wide field individual sio sequencing), may be able to use a different approach, and now researchers no longer need to use color to mark brain regions and their projected regions, but instead use nucleotide sequences To mark it, to make the four letters of the DNA code into short "bar codes" can actually produce an infinite number of labels, which can effectively distinguish between different cells, and when tagged, researchers can use DNA sequences to analyze small fragments of brain tissue and interpret each recurring bar code as a signal for cell connectionsThe diversity of barcodes is so high that they can now label a large number of neurons and brain regions in each animal, and use them to project multiple brain regionsFinally, the researchers say the new technique, called BRICseq, can accurately map connections between different regions of the brains of mice, a method that may also be widely used to study their organismsOriginal origins: Longwen Huang, Justus MKebschull, Daniel F?rth, et alBRICseq Bridges Brain-wide Interregional Connectivity to Activity and Gene In Single Single Animals, Cell (2020)doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.029.