Mapping the brain, cell by cell
MIT chemical engineers and neuroscientists have devised a new way to preserve biological tissue, allowing them to visualize proteins, DNA, and other molecules within cells, and to map the connections between neurons. The researchers showed that they could use this method, known as SHIELD, to trace the connections between neurons in a part of the brain that helps control movement and other neurons throughout the brain. “Using our technique, for the first time, we were able to map the connectivity of these neurons at single-cell resolution,” says Kwanghun Chung, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and a member of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. “We can get all this multiscale, multidimensional information from the same tissue in a fully integrated manner because with SHIELD we can protect all this information.” Chung is the senior author of the paper, which appears in the Dec. 17...