MIT engineers have developed a groundbreaking MRI-based method to detect bioluminescence in the brain, enabling precise imaging of deep brain structures and enhancing understanding of brain functions and gene expression. Credit: SciTechDaily.comallows for detailed imaging of bioluminescence deep within the brain, offering new insights into how brain cells develop and communicate with each other.
MIT engineers have now come up with a novel way to detect this type of light, known as bioluminescence, in the brain: They engineered blood vessels of the brain to express a protein that causes them to dilate in the presence of light. That dilation can then be observed with magnetic resonance imaging , allowing researchers to pinpoint the source of light.
Jasanoff, who is also an associate investigator at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, is the senior author of the study, which appears today in. Former MIT postdocs Robert Ohlendorf and Nan Li are the lead authors of the paper. “Blood vessels are a dominant source of imaging contrast in functional MRI and other non-invasive imaging techniques, so we thought we could convert the intrinsic ability of these techniques to image blood vessels into a means for imaging light, by photosensitizing the blood vessels themselves,” Jasanoff says.photoactivated adenylate cyclase . When exposed to light, this enzyme produces a molecule called cAMP, which causes blood vessels to dilate.
Once the blood vessels were sensitized to light, the researchers implanted cells that had been engineered to express luciferase if a substrate called CZT is present. In the rats, the researchers were able to detect luciferase by imaging the brain with MRI, which revealed dilated blood vessels.The researchers then tested whether their technique could detect light produced by the brain’s own cells, if they were engineered to express luciferase.
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