Brainbow Mice: a Rainbow of Colors in the Brain
JAX® NOTES Issue 510, Summer 2008
Brainbow mice are an exciting new tool for color-identifying subsets of neurons involved in the brain's circuitry. The architects of Brainbow mice (Livet et al. 2007) used them to identify hundreds of neighboring axons and multiple synaptic contacts in a small part of a cerebellar lobe in which approximately 90 colors were distinguishable.
We offer the following four founder lines of Brainbow mice:
B6.Cg-Tg(Thy1-Brainbow1.1)MLich/J 007901
Cells labeled: peripheral and central neurons
B6;CBA-Tg(Thy1-Brainbow1.0)LLich/J 007910
Cells labeled: same as line H, and a few cerebellar Purkinje neurons
B6.Cg-Tg(Thy1-Brainbow1.1)MLich/J 007911
Cells labeled: astrocytes of all areas of the brain and spinal cord, dentate gyrus granule cells
B6.Cg-Tg(Thy1-Brainbow2.1)RLich/J 007921
Cells labeled: same as line H, plus a few cerebellar Purkinje neurons; expression is observed in the nucleus of these cells
More information and award-winning images
Reference
Livet J, Weissman TA, Kang H, Draft RW, Lu J, Bennis R. 2007. Transgenic strategies for combinatorial expression of fluorescent proteins in the nervous system. Nature 450:56-62.
