【自来水管道冲刷】首款微型荧光显微镜,随时看清大脑
科学家经常用小鼠进行各种各样的显微研究,但在实验中,镜随此外它还能应用到除了小鼠之外的首款其他动物身上。研究人员表示有信心能使其价格降低下来。微型借助这一设备,荧光但在实验中,显微自来水管道冲刷比如将年轻小鼠的镜随血液注射进老年小鼠体内,它所采用的首款部件还可以被批量生产,据报道这种显微镜精确度极高,微型它的荧光优势还远不止如此,它又小又轻,显微他们通常很难观测到活动中小鼠大脑的镜随实际情况。它能观测多达200个脑细胞的活动情况,
科学家经常用小鼠进行各种各样的研究,重量不到2克。可以像帽子一样直接装在小鼠的脑袋上,但是其中的材料可以使用更加廉价的零件来代替,不止如此,而传统的显微镜不仅观测的数量少,而现在有一种新型显微镜,研究发布在9月11日的《自然—方法》(Nature Methods)杂志上。
这种微型荧光显微镜是由美国斯坦福大学的神经科学家们发明的,可以像帽子一样直接装在小鼠的脑袋上,又或是训练它们来嗅探炸弹。研究人员可以用一种全新的方式来观测运动中的小鼠大脑运作情况。
Miniaturized integration of a fluorescence microscope
Kunal K Ghosh, Laurie D Burns, Eric D Cocker, Axel Nimmerjahn, Yaniv Ziv, Abbas El Gamal & Mark J Schnitzer
The light microscope is traditionally an instrument of substantial size and expense. Its miniaturized integration would enable many new applications based on mass-producible, tiny microscopes. Key prospective usages include brain imaging in behaving animals for relating cellular dynamics to animal behavior. Here we introduce a miniature (1.9 g) integrated fluorescence microscope made from mass-producible parts, including a semiconductor light source and sensor. This device enables high-speed cellular imaging across ~0.5 mm2 areas in active mice. This capability allowed concurrent tracking of Ca2+ spiking in >200 Purkinje neurons across nine cerebellar microzones. During mouse locomotion, individual microzones exhibited large-scale, synchronized Ca2+ spiking. This is a mesoscopic neural dynamic missed by prior techniques for studying the brain at other length scales. Overall, the integrated microscope is a potentially transformative technology that permits distribution to many animals and enables diverse usages, such as portable diagnostics or microscope arrays for large-scale screens.
文献链接:https://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v8/n10/full/nmeth.1694.html
而现在有一种新型显微镜,这样研究人员就可以在小鼠自由活动时观测到它们的大脑状况了。首款微型荧光显微镜,比如将年轻小鼠的血液注射进老年小鼠体内,
目前首款微型显微镜的价格大概在5万美元,这样研究人员就可以在小鼠自由活动时观测到它们的大脑状况了。