Researchers have been trying to map out the brain’s complex neural circuits to understand how diseases like Parkinson’s disrupt healthy brain communication, in hopes of designing better therapies.
That, obviously, is not easy. So a Stanford research team led by biology professor Liqun Luo, PhD, and bioengineer and physicist Stephen Quake, PhD, are instead studying fruit fly brains — yes, those pesky bugs that fly around your bananas.
Specifically, they have mapped out a blueprint for the fruit fly’s olfactory neurons — identifying how specific gene and protein activity correlates with the biological circuitry of different neuronal cell types. The researchers focused on a fruit fly’s sense of smell because the function, physiology and anatomy of its olfactory system are well known, making it a simple and ideal test bed for their research.
They measured the gene expression profiles using a single-cell sequencing technology developed for mice and human cell types, which they modified to work for the smaller and simpler fruit fly cells.
The team determined different types of neurons express genes differently during development, but gene expression between the neuron types becomes indistinguishable as the flies mature, as recently reported in Cell.
“Once the brain is wired up, the fly doesn’t need to express those genes that help them in choosing the connection partners,” said first author and Stanford biology postdoc Hongjie Li, PhD, in a recent news release. “So there is less gene expression in the adult flies.”
The researchers are a long way from using their technique to map the human brain, but they aren’t daunted by the challeng. “By further developing this approach, we hope to one day reverse-engineer and perhaps even repair defective circuitry in the human brain,” Li said in the release.
This is a reposting of my Scope blog story, courtesy of Stanford School of Medicine.
Scientists Talk Funny 