Nature Methods – 2, 599 – 605 (2005)
Published online: 21 July 2005; | doi:10.1038/nmeth777
Many memorable journal articles are those that present a new method to the science community. For this week’s TBT I’m posting about an article that literally made the experiments in my own thesis possible. Anne Taylor and colleagues published a novel way to compartmentalize cultured neurons in Nature Methods, 10 years ago (yikes!). One of the fundamental properties of neurons is that they consist of molecularly and functionally distinct compartments. Axons, cell bodies, and dendrites all have their unique roles to ensure proper growth and maintenance of the neuron, as well as for completing the neuron’s mission to transmit information from one neuron to another. The complexity of this compartmentalization is really quite beautiful; and can really be quite difficult to understand. This article presents a microfluidic chamber as a way to isolate (and thus study) separate parts of the cell, in vitro. (more…)