By Beth Kenkel
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The central nervous system (CNS) orchestrates complex processes enabling organisms to control their movements and behavior. These functions and others are controlled by collections of neurons that are intricately wired into circuits through synaptic connections (Shepherd, 2004). ...
Background on neuronal tracing A key aspect to understanding the brain’s function is knowing its architecture, in particular the connections between different brain regions. For example, communication between the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex brain regions is involved in ...
While lentiviral vectors are popular gene delivery tools, producing lentivirus, can pose certain challenges. Whether choosing a system that is the best fit for the experiment, trying to produce virus of a usable titer, or fine-tuning selection and expression in your target cell ...
It was by serendipity that I got into the field of gene therapy, more specifically AAV-based retinal gene therapy. The year was 2001 and I started a job as a technician in a lab using adeno-associated viral vectors (AAVs) to treat an inherited retinal degenerative disease called ...
Viruses are intracellular parasites and natural vehicles for genetic information. Therefore they make excellent tools for genetic engineering. There are several different viral vectors to choose from, for example gamma-retrovirus, lentivirus, Adenovirus, and Adeno-associated ...
Adenoviral vectors (AdV) are attractive vectors for research applications and gene therapy: they can be produced at high titers, can accommodate large transgenes, transduce quiescent and dividing cells, and do not integrate into the host’s genome. The main challenge with using ...
Why study neural connectivity? One of the early lessons many of us learned in biology is that the body’s architecture and plumbing are important. We started with learning the head is connected to the neck. Shortly after, we learned about organs and the jobs they perform. This ...
