NewScientist.com: 3D Maps Show Brain Gene Activity

Marcos Oliveira de Carvalho • June 26, 2002

NewScientist.com: 3D Maps Show Brain Gene Activity
(1 comment)

An article by Philip Cohen:

``A rapid way to create a 3D map of the brain's genetic activity should help researchers pinpoint the neurological underpinnings of autism, schizophrenia and other brain disorders.

``Desmond Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles and his colleagues developed the technique called `voxelation' to study Parkinson's disease in a mouse model. `We could see mass migrations of gene activity. It was very dramatic,' says Smith.

``The team found that one group of genes shifted their activity away from the striatum - a region known to be highly disrupted by Parkinson's disease. Their analysis also revealed that genes involved with communication between cells seem to figure prominently in the disease.

``While the impact of Parkinson's on different parts of the brain is well established, the abnormal regions involved in many neurological disorders remains a mystery.

``The problem is that the trouble-making cells behind, schizophrenia, for example, could be a small group of upstarts in the brain's huge collection of specialised cells. And to make the matter worse, only a few of our 30,000 or genes may be misfiring in these cells.''

Full story:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992448

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3D maps show brain gene activity

Submitted by Nobody ; posted on Wednesday, June 26, 2002

Does anyone know if this kind of technique would be applicable to studying gene expression in embryological development studies to produce a kind of 3D image of gene expression? Visualizing what is going on in development processes in 3D is often tricky. In-situ hybridizations are limited in the number of genes you can look at, at one time and they are often limited by optical clarity of the specimen esp. if used whole.

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