Molecular Neurobiology, Single-Cell

Abstract

The brain is composed of hundreds of thousands of cell types, each making thousands of connections to other cells in order to communicate and to facilitate proper interactive functioning. One of the ways that cells respond to and propagate signals is to change the abundances of various signaling molecules within the cell. These molecules include RNA and proteins, which, through their unique abundances and degree of activation transmit accurate messages to responsive cells. To understand these changes, evaluation of molecular pathways in single cells is required. With the development of single-cell molecular biological analysis techniques, changes in RNA and protein abundances can be monitored. Using methods such as, aRNA amplification, qRT-PCR, IDAT and protein arrays it is possible to obtain these measurements. Such anatomical specificity has the potential to revolutionize molecular research by simplifying the complexities of a multicellular pathway to an experimentally approachable system.