europeanmolecularbiologylaboratory
Latest
The Big Picture: a closer look at live rodent nerve cells
What you're looking at up above isn't a crazy anaglyph 3D image. Well, at least not intentionally. It's actually the result of a decade-old tagging method that researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Italy are now using in live mice. The method, called SNAP-tagging, uses proteins that latch onto specific chemical structures and don't let go. To explore rodent nerves, researchers genetically engineered the mice to produce SNAP proteins and then injected the vermin with fluorescent probes that the proteins would attach to. This allows them to be followed through the body with a microscope. For example, in the picture above, the thick blue lines are hairs and the red bundles are nerves.
