SHUTTERSTOCK, IDESIGN
Borrowing a gene from a Dead Sea microorganism, researchers at Harvard University have developed neurons that fluoresce in response to electrical activity, providing the first ever visual cue for neuronal firing.
“It’s very exciting. In terms of basic biology, there are a number of things we can now do which we’ve never been able to do,” lead researcher Adam Cohen told the Harvard Gazette. “We may someday even be able to study how these signals move in living animals.”
To achieve this feat, Cohen and his colleagues transfected cultured rat hippocampal neurons with a viral vector carrying the gene for a microbial rhodopsin protein called Archaerhodopsin 3 (Arch) from an arcahea species found in the Dead Sea bordering Jordan and Israel. The resulting neurons lit ...
