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  • TECHNOLOGY FEATURE

Genetic light bulbs illuminate the brain

Genetically encoded voltage indicators change colour in real time when neurons transmit electrical information, offering unprecedented insight into neural activity.
  1. Jyoti Madhusoodanan

    1. Jyoti Madhusoodanan is a science writer in Portland, Oregon.

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Douglas Storace still has the dollar bill that he triumphantly taped above his laboratory bench seven years ago, a trophy from a successful wager. His postdoctoral mentor, Larry Cohen at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, bet that Storace couldn’t express a protein sensor of voltage changes in mice back in September 2012. Storace won.

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Nature 574, 437-439 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03064-8

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