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First map of every neuron in an adult brain has been produced for a fruit fly

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Originally published by UK Research and Innovation on October 2, 2024   3D rendering of all ~140k neurons in the fruit fly brain. Credit: Data source: FlyWire.ai; Rendering by Philipp Schlegel (University of Cambridge/MRC LMB). The first wiring diagram of every neuron in an adult brain and the 50 million connections between them has been produced for a fruit fly . This landmark achievement has been conducted by a large international collaboration of scientists , called the FlyWire Consortium , including researchers from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology ( in Cambridge, UK ), Princeton University, the University of Vermont and the University of Cambridge . It is published in a pair of papers in Nature . The diagram of all 139,255 neurons in the adult fly brain is the first of an entire brain for an animal that can walk and see . Previous efforts have completed the whole brain diagrams for much smaller brains , for example, for that of a fruit fly larva, whi...
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Engineered Rabies Virus Illuminates Neural Circuitry

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Originally published by Hannah Thomasy, PhD, for the Scientist on June 14, 2024 Scientists turned a deadly virus into a crucial tool for understanding the wiring of the brain.   Rabies labeling helps scientists identify neurons in the primary visual cortex that connect to two different higher visual brain regions. Marina Garrett  In 1906 , pathologist Camillo Golgi and neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal won the Nobel Prize for their work on the structure of the nervous system . More than a century later, the puzzle of nervous system organization —the intricately tangled mess that results from each neuron’s connections to thousands of others— remains incomplete . Yet, fully developing scientific understanding of these connections is crucial , said Edward Callaway , a systems neurobiologist at the Salk Institute . “If you don’t have some knowledge about how the different parts are interacting , there’s no way to generate a hypothesis about how they’re working toget...
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Study discovers cellular activity that hints recycling is in our DNA

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Originally published by by Rose Miyatsu, University of California - Santa Cruz , on May 11, 2024 Shown is the splicing pathway. The pre-messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) has exons (blue) and introns (pink). The spliceosome (not shown) was known to catalyze two chemical reactions (black arrows) in a two-step process (green arrows labeled 1 and 2) that splice the exons together and removes the intron as a lariat. This study demonstrates that after splicing is finished, the spliceosome is still active and can convert the lariat intron into a circle using a third reaction (green arrow 3) marked by an asterix. Credit: Manuel Ares, UC Santa Cruz Although you may not appreciate them, or have even heard of them, throughout your body , countless microscopic machines called spliceosomes are hard at work . As you sit and read, they are faithfully and rapidly putting back together the broken information in your genes by removing sequences called " introns " so that your messenger RNAs can...
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