Brainbow Mouse

Modern biologists are able to make living cells fluoresce by altering them with genes taken from coral and jellyfish. However, even after marking them in this manner, visually disentangling individual neurons from their neighbours remains difficult. In 2007, a team at Harvard University made a breakthrough by developing the ‘Brainbow’ mouse. Their technique enabled whole arrays of similar neurons to be discriminated from one another because each one expresses different combinations of a palette of coloured proteins. Photographs are then digitally re-coloured to enhance the contrast between cells and reveal spectacular maps of the complex interconnections within the nervous system.