The brain is composed of billions of neurons and glial cells, which communicate with each other to process and store information (learning and memory), control movement and regulate emotions. Understanding the molecular organization within specific neuronal and glial compartments is crucial for understanding how brain circuits function in physiological condition but also to identify markers for some neurodevelopmental or neurodegenerative diseases such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or Alzheimer disease.
Single molecule localization microscopy has allowed major breakthroughs in Neuroscience. Among them, the discovery of actin ring periodicity along neuronal axons by the lab of Professor Xiaowei Zhuang (1). This led to more studies, trying to understand the organization of other cytoskeleton proteins along axonal domains (2) and the impact of such organization for electrical signal transmission and neuronal development. Another major discovery is the nanoscale clustering of synaptic proteins both at excitatory and inhibitory synapses (3,4,5); and the trans-synaptic alignment of these proteins (5). The nanoscale organization of synapses have been shown has a key property of synapses allowing a fine tuning of the efficiency of synaptic transmission and has open new hypothesis to tackle the question of how learning and memory process are regulated as well as the identification of potential markers for neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases.
Abbelight’s solutions and technologies are perfectly adapted to the neuroscience research by allowing the possibility to acquire more data in less time compare to other SMLM solution on the market in particular thanks to its large Field of View (ASTER patented technology) and simultaneous multicolor capabilities. In addition, Abbelight BioImaging Platform through its multiplexing capabilities, is ideal to characterizing macromolecular complex involved in many neuronal function.
