Publication highlights

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Explore a selection of research case studies from the past five years.

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Researchers at the Crick are tackling the big questions about human health and disease, and new findings are published every week.

Our faculty have picked some of the most significant papers published by Crick scientists, all of which are freely available thanks to our open science policy.

Volume EM and X-ray imaging

X-ray imaging captures the brain’s intricate connections

Researchers at the Crick and the Paul Scherrer Institute have developed a new imaging protocol to capture mouse brain cell connections in precise detail. Building on standard volume EM sample preparation protocols, they tested a new step - embedding the stained tissue using a resin developed in the nuclear and aerospace industries to protect against radiation. The samples were then imaged using X-rays in a synchrotron. The resulting images, produced using a specific type of X-ray imaging called X-ray ptychography, reached a resolution of 38nm. This was enough to show multiple elements of the mouse brain circuitry, including synapses, dendrites and axons.

Nondestructive X-ray tomography of brain tissue ultrastructure

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Published in Nature Methods

Published

An image of the neural circuits of a genetically identified olfactory bulb glomerulus and an electron micrograph with glomeruli outlined in orange and yellow.

A 'SONAR system' using smell helps mice navigate

Previous work has found that, surprisingly, olfaction is a high-frequency sense: mice can discriminate odour fluctuations at 40 Hz or more. What could this high-frequency acuity be used for? By analyzing simulations of two-dimensional air flow containing multiple odour sources, researchers at the Crick show that high-frequency odour fluctuations contain more information about how far apart two odour sources are than low frequencies. This suggests that the high-frequency acuity helps mice build accurate olfactory maps of their environments, a sort of passive SONAR, but using smells instead of sound.

Quantifying spectral information about source separation in multisource odour plumes

Published in PLOS ONE

Published

Untapped potential of stem cells could aid repair of spinal cord damage

Researchers in the Reis e Sousa lab have identified a group of latent stem cells that respond to injury in the central nervous system of mice. If a similar type of cell exists in humans, they could offer a new therapeutic approach to treat brain and spinal cord injuries. They found that these ependymal cells divided continuously over a long period of time, and were also able to differentiate into all three main cell types of the central nervous system - neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.

DNGR-1-tracing marks an ependymal cell subset with damage-responsive neural stem cell potential

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Published in Developmental Cell

Published

Active sampling state dynamically enhances olfactory bulb odor representation

Animals engage actively with their environment, yet how active sampling strategies impact neural activity was unknown. We showed that mice adapt sniffing during learning in a way that enhances neuronal representation. Furthermore, this work resolves a long-standing conundrum that seemingly non-olfactory information is prominently represented in the OB: context influences sniffing, which in turn changes neural activity.

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Published in Neuron

Published

Figurative illustration of a brain-computer interface

Massively parallel microwire arrays integrated with CMOS chips for neural recording

Neuroprosthetics and neuroscience research alike are limited by the bandwidth of neural recording. At the same time, ever-more powerful silicon-based technology is ubiquitous in our phones, tablets and computers. Here we showed that progress in neural recording can be coupled to this by fusing bundles of microwires to pixel array chips, lifting silicon technology to the third dimension for deep brain recording.

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Published in Science advances

Published

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Research case studies 

Explore a selection of recent case studies that spotlight particular areas of research at the Crick.