Expansion Sequencing Creates Google Map of Mouse Brain Messages
Source: Shahar Alon, Daniel Goodwin, Ed Boyden
February 1, 2021
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“We now have a ‘Google map’ that allows measuring millions of RNA molecules within the tissue with nanoscale precision, without having to extract them as we did previously,” says Shahar Alon, PhD, of Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Engineering, Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials. The new technology, Expansion Sequencing or ExSeq, is a significant step forward in efforts to treat complex diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and cancer.
Science, researchers from Bar-Ilan University, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reveal that they have succeeded in developing a technology that allows them, for the first time, to pinpoint millions of RNA molecules inside tissues with nanoscale resolution.
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Over the last decade the field of genomics, which enables the extraction and in-depth study of RNA molecules from any tissue, has transformed biology and medicine. Molecules derived from a tissue of a healthy individual, for example, can be compared to molecules of a diseased individual, potentially revealing the cause of disease.
Until now this powerful approach has been limited to studying molecules outside the tissue. But for the proper function of tissues, it is important to identify the location of RNA molecules inside them. In a paper published today in the journal
Science, researchers from Bar-Ilan University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reveal that they have succeeded in developing a technology that allows them, for the first time, to pinpoint millions of RNA molecules mapped inside tissues with nanoscale resolution.