Microetching neurons with Gabrielle!

Greetings! My name is Gabrielle and I am the Scimemi Lab Manager. I have a BA in Biology from Cornell University, a PhD in Chemical Biology from the University of Michigan and several years of post doc experience. My expertise lies in molecular biology, although I have dabbled in NMR, mass spectrometry, biochemistry and microscopy. I have worked in a wide range of organisms from plants to bacteria to viruses, but the Scimemi lab marks my inauguration into mammalian research. Managing a mouse colony can be challenging as there are a lot of moving parts, but it is a fun organization/optimization problem. While I have no formal training in neurobiology, it is exciting to be able to apply my molecular biology skills to a new field.

I recently came across a ScienceFriday interview with the artist Greg Dunn. He uses a technique called photolithography to make detailed artwork of neurons. He draws neurons with ink, scans the image and prints microetching data at ultrahigh resolution onto a transparency to generate a mask. He places these masks onto a photoresist surface and shines UV light over it. Wherever UV light penetrates the mask, it polymerizes the photoresist material, which hardens it; regions shielded by the mask do not polymerize and can be washed away with a basic solution. The remaining features are subsequently plated in gold leaf. This microetching process generates features with single micron resolution (or about 1/100 of the width of human hair!).

Intriguingly, in addition to creating beautiful two dimensional images, Dunn has also incorporated animations into his microetched patterns such that as a light source is moved over the image (or when your perspective changes) the reflection of light from the gold leaf fluctuates to portray electrical signals travelling across the neurons. He has used this technique to generate an image of a slice of the entire brain, incorporating real scientific data about the size of ~500,000 neurons and their features, the connectivity between different parts of the brain, and information about the coordination among firing neurons during 500 microseconds of “brain time”. These exquisite images serve to highlight the complexity and the stunning beauty of our brains. More artwork can be found here. Enjoy!

Gabrielle Todd