Question

(2) What is “Brainbow”? How does the system work? If you wanted to understand the neuronal connections that are responsible for coordinating voluntary motor function which cell type would you label with brainbow? What specific transgenes would you use?

Answer 1

Brainbow is the technique by which particular neurons can be labelled by fluorescent protein and can be identified from the neighbouring cells to study the function of the particular neuron and trace the molecular pathways associted with it.it might help in mapping of nervous system complexes.

Brainbow is the combination of genetic and cell staining based method.It works based on cre-lox recombination system where cre is under inducible promotor.Cre recombinase promotes the inversion and excision of DNA present between loxP site. so that temporal and saptial expression of gene can be controlled.

Corticospinal motor neuron (CSMN) will be used to understand the neuronal connection that is responsible for coordinating voluntary motor function.This is because ,the CSMN is the specialized neuron located at central cortex which has unique ability to receive the signal ,integrate them, translate and transmit the input of the cerebral cotex to the spianl cord, therefore voluntary modulation can be traced out.

The conventional bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) transgene will be used to insert the promotor region of gene of interest to amplify the reporter expression to imitate the endogenous pattern of expression.