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  • TECHNOLOGY FEATURE

An expanding molecular toolbox untangles neural circuits

Scientists are developing ways to probe the activity, function and organization of neurons in real time with increasing precision.
  1. Esther Landhuis

    1. Esther Landhuis is a freelance journalist based near San Francisco, California.

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Different genes in a mouse brain slice are imaged in different colours using the BARseq2 technique

The BARseq2 technique can identify snippets of messenger RNA (colours) and help researchers see which brain layers those snippets are in. Credit: Yu-Chi Sun et al./Nature Neurosci.

Life is full of nervous reactions — a head snaps towards a voice, leg muscles tense at the sound of a starting gun and thirsty mice scamper towards a squirt of water when trained to respond to a certain tone.

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Nature 599, 335-337 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03054-9

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