This technology enables the in vivo tagging of active neurons through the dual expression of a calcium sensor and a photoactivatable fluorescent protein, allowing for subsequent harvesting and molecular analysis.
Correlating neuronal activity with molecular signatures is essential to understanding cellular function in both health and disease. However, existing methods, such as transgenic reporter mice or calcium imaging coupled with transcriptomics, are limited by low throughput, cell-type labeling constraints, and insufficient spatial resolution in densely packed neural tissue. This highlights the need for a more flexible and high-resolution strategy to map neuronal function to gene expression in vivo.
This technology is a method that utilizes a vector co-expressing a calcium sensor and a photoactivatable fluorescent protein to assess neuronal activity and selectively label activated neurons, respectively. Labeled active neurons can then be collected for complementary molecular analysis, allowing the connection between neuronal activity patterns and the underlying gene expression. As such, this technology has the potential to facilitate a more seamless integration of neuronal function with molecular properties.
This technology has been validated in mice.
Patent Pending (US 20250303003)
IR CU24343
Licensing Contact: Kristin Neuman
