Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States.
Biophysics LS&A, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States.
Front Neural Circuits. 2021 Oct 20;15:732183. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2021.732183. eCollection 2021.
Identifying the cellular origins and mapping the dendritic and axonal arbors of neurons have been century old quests to understand the heterogeneity among these brain cells. Current Brainbow based transgenic animals take the advantage of multispectral labeling to differentiate neighboring cells or lineages, however, their applications are limited by the color capacity. To improve the analysis throughput, we designed Bitbow, a digital format of Brainbow which exponentially expands the color palette to provide tens of thousands of spectrally resolved unique labels. We generated transgenic Bitbow lines, established statistical tools, and streamlined sample preparation, image processing, and data analysis pipelines to conveniently mapping neural lineages, studying neuronal morphology and revealing neural network patterns with unprecedented speed, scale, and resolution.
鉴定神经元的细胞起源并绘制其树突和轴突分支一直是理解这些脑细胞异质性的百年探索目标。目前基于 Brainbow 的转基因动物利用多光谱标记来区分相邻的细胞或谱系，然而，它们的应用受到颜色容量的限制。为了提高分析通量，我们设计了 Bitbow，它是 Brainbow 的一种数字格式，可将调色板扩展到数万种光谱分辨率的独特标签。我们生成了转基因 Bitbow 系，并建立了统计工具和简化的样本制备、图像处理和数据分析管道，以便以空前的速度、规模和分辨率方便地绘制神经谱系、研究神经元形态和揭示神经网络模式。
