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We owe a lot Our understanding of how memory works in the brain is a humble sea slug called Sea hare. It is about a foot long and has a reddish-brown color. It has been favored by scientists since the 1960s because its neurons are large enough to insert electrodes.
This is not the only time researchers have gone deep in the ocean to find answers about our own neurology: giant squid taught us the basic principles of action potentials, the way signals travel along nerve cells, and horseshoe crabs help clarify how our visual system works (Although it has eight eyes more than us).Octopus provides insight The evolution of sleep.
Brady Weissbourd, a postdoctoral scholar in biology and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology, said: “No matter what the problem is at the time, people have a long and beautiful history of searching for marine invertebrates.” Weissbourd is the first author. Recent papers exist cell This brings another organism into the trap-a genetically modified jellyfish whose neurons glow when they fire. It can give us a new understanding of ways of thinking that are completely different from our own way of thinking.
Jellyfish, especially one found in the Mediterranean called Clytia hemisphaerica, Is the perfect candidate for scientific research. It is about a centimeter wide when fully grown-small enough to fit on a microscope slide-and, like many jellyfish, it is transparent. The researchers built this potential by introducing a DNA fragment called GCaMP, which produces green fluorescent protein. GCaMP has been widely used in the research of mice, zebrafish and flies, but it actually originally came from KritiaTherefore, Weissbourd’s team must also knock out the other four green fluorescent protein genes that naturally exist in it.
In order to insert the luminescence gene, they used KritiaUnique life cycle. Its reproductive system is triggered by light. “Fully two hours after the light comes on, the jellyfish releases the eggs and sperm into the water,” Weissbourd said. The researchers turn on the lights, collect the eggs, and then inject them with the green fluorescent code fragment they want to insert, as well as a protein that helps to splice it into the jellyfish’s DNA.
The fertilized eggs develop into larvae, and they swim around looking for a hard surface to attach to-in nature, this may be a rock. In the laboratory, microscope slides provide a useful alternative. From there, they grow a tiny polyp and develop into a colony. These groups are immortal in nature. They release juvenile jellyfish-in a few weeks, they grow into gelatinous, shower cap-like creatures, which we call jellyfish. “They are more like a flower or something,” Weissbourd said. “Their job is to go out and sow seeds.”
Now, researchers have a creature that they can observe under the microscope to eat (a kind of brine shrimp paste) and fold the body, and the neurons that control these behaviors glow. “You can perform really high-resolution experiments, observing the activity of each neuron during animal behavior,” Weissbourd said. They can basically read its thoughts—this is a kind of thought that is very different from anything we are familiar with.
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