Mapping of neural circuits in healthy and diseased brains:

“Gray matter no more. Just in time for Halloween, these neurons from a mouse’s hippocampus have gotten a garish new look. Using genetic engineering, researchers inserted into mice as many as four genes encoding fluorescent proteins. Neurons randomly expressed various combinations and levels of the proteins to turn themselves any of approximately 90 colors, the team reports online 31 October in Nature. The researchers say their new “brainbow” technology will be useful for mapping out neural circuits in healthy and diseased brains. (Photo: Jean Livet et al., Nature (2007))”

Article from:
ScienceNow

Preparing 3-D Images Of World’s Most Deadly Infectious Diseases

Article from ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2007):

“….Scientists at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine are mapping parts of the lethal bacteria in three dimensions, exposing a new and intimate chemical portrait of the biological killer down to its very atoms. This view of the disease will offer scientists who design drugs a fresh opening into the bacteria’s vulnerabilities, and thus enable them to create drugs to disable it or vaccines to prevent it.

Anthrax is just the beginning. The Feinberg School is directing an ambitious national project that will map a rogues’ gallery of 375 proteins from deadly infectious diseases over the next five years. It is being funded by a $31 million contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. The payoff could be a wave of new medicines to wipe out some of the worst scourges to ever infect the human race. “

Chemical that triggers parkinson’s disease discovered

“ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2007) — Researchers at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine have discovered the key brain chemical that causes Parkinson’s disease – a breakthrough finding that could pave the way for new, far more effective therapies to treat one of the most common and debilitating neurological disorders. “

“In the process that leads to Parkinson’s disease, dopamine is converted into a highly toxic chemical called DOPAL. Using test-tube, cell-culture and animal models, the researchers found that it is DOPAL that causes alpha-synuclein protein in the brain to clump together, which in turn triggers the death of dopamine-producing cells and leads to Parkinson’s.

“This is very exciting,” Burke said. “This is the first time that anyone has ever established that it is a naturally occurring byproduct of dopamine that causes alpha-synuclein to aggregate, or clump together. It’s actually DOPAL that kicks this whole process off and results in Parkinson’s disease.”

The research was supported by grants from the Missouri ADRDA Program, the Nestle Foundation, the St. Louis Veterans Administration Medical Center, the National Institutes of Health, the American Federation on Aging Research, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Charitable Trust and the Blue Gator Foundation.

The scientists’ findings are published in an early online edition of the journal Acta Neuropathologica.”