Retrograde tracing tools are really fundamental to modern systems neuroscience. I didn't know they had these "tropism" limitations. Seems like this new tracing tool could be useful but not exactly...
Retrograde tracing tools are really fundamental to modern systems neuroscience. I didn't know they had these "tropism" limitations. Seems like this new tracing tool could be useful but not exactly groundbreaking.
It seems like the very reason this tool is so important is because it addresses those limitations, unless tropism wasn't as big of an impediment to research as the article implies.
I didn't know they had these "tropism" limitations. Seems like this new tracing tool could be useful but not exactly groundbreaking.
It seems like the very reason this tool is so important is because it addresses those limitations, unless tropism wasn't as big of an impediment to research as the article implies.
Disclaimer: I am a molecular/cellular neuroscientist, not a systems guy. I think that's right. Tropism is only an issue for negative results. For instance, imagine you inject your retrograde...
Disclaimer: I am a molecular/cellular neuroscientist, not a systems guy.
unless tropism wasn't as big of an impediment to research as the article implies.
I think that's right. Tropism is only an issue for negative results. For instance, imagine you inject your retrograde tracer into brain region B. You check brain region A and don't see a signal. You conclude that brain region A does not project to brain region B. However, due to tropism, your tracer just didn't work.
However, there are a plethora of positive results where you inject into brain region B and there is signal in brain region A. These results should still be reliable.
What is boils down to is how often we've been getting false negatives. If it's really frequent, then this new tool will be really helpful. However, if our false negative rate is already pretty low, then this tool won't be that helpful.
Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist nor a systems professional, I'm just fascinated by these things, so you definitely have more authority here. What interests me most about the points this article...
Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist nor a systems professional, I'm just fascinated by these things, so you definitely have more authority here.
What is boils down to is how often we've been getting false negatives. If it's really frequent, then this new tool will be really helpful. However, if our false negative rate is already pretty low, then this tool won't be that helpful.
What interests me most about the points this article brings up is that those problems with tropism seem to be widespread in virology and bacteriology overall, and at other levels of science too (although in the latter case it's not really a problem). In general it seems like a big step if this means researchers can now control selectively for trophism via protein receptor 'keys' instead of having to guess whether a particular virus or bacteria will 'take'.
I agree that this definitely could be a useful tool for those cases where you have viral tropism issues. It's tough though, because you have to inject a second virus in your candidate projection...
I agree that this definitely could be a useful tool for those cases where you have viral tropism issues. It's tough though, because you have to inject a second virus in your candidate projection brain regions. So this method is not unbiased and there's no guarantee that you'll find anything novel. The flip side is that there could be some hidden projections we don't know about that are fundamental to how the brain works--discovering a handful of these could greatly increase our understanding of neural circuits.
Retrograde tracing tools are really fundamental to modern systems neuroscience. I didn't know they had these "tropism" limitations. Seems like this new tracing tool could be useful but not exactly groundbreaking.
It seems like the very reason this tool is so important is because it addresses those limitations, unless tropism wasn't as big of an impediment to research as the article implies.
Disclaimer: I am a molecular/cellular neuroscientist, not a systems guy.
I think that's right. Tropism is only an issue for negative results. For instance, imagine you inject your retrograde tracer into brain region B. You check brain region A and don't see a signal. You conclude that brain region A does not project to brain region B. However, due to tropism, your tracer just didn't work.
However, there are a plethora of positive results where you inject into brain region B and there is signal in brain region A. These results should still be reliable.
What is boils down to is how often we've been getting false negatives. If it's really frequent, then this new tool will be really helpful. However, if our false negative rate is already pretty low, then this tool won't be that helpful.
Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist nor a systems professional, I'm just fascinated by these things, so you definitely have more authority here.
What interests me most about the points this article brings up is that those problems with tropism seem to be widespread in virology and bacteriology overall, and at other levels of science too (although in the latter case it's not really a problem). In general it seems like a big step if this means researchers can now control selectively for trophism via protein receptor 'keys' instead of having to guess whether a particular virus or bacteria will 'take'.
I agree that this definitely could be a useful tool for those cases where you have viral tropism issues. It's tough though, because you have to inject a second virus in your candidate projection brain regions. So this method is not unbiased and there's no guarantee that you'll find anything novel. The flip side is that there could be some hidden projections we don't know about that are fundamental to how the brain works--discovering a handful of these could greatly increase our understanding of neural circuits.