{"id":227084,"date":"2025-12-13T22:19:49","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T04:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/is-bioluminescence-the-key-to-safe-effective-brain-imaging"},"modified":"2025-12-13T22:19:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T04:19:49","slug":"is-bioluminescence-the-key-to-safe-effective-brain-imaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/is-bioluminescence-the-key-to-safe-effective-brain-imaging","title":{"rendered":"Is bioluminescence the key to safe, effective brain imaging?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/is-bioluminescence-the-key-to-safe-effective-brain-imaging2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A decade ago, a group of scientists had the literally brilliant idea to use bioluminescent light to visualize brain activity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe started thinking: \u2018What if we could light up the brain from the inside?\u2019\u201d said Christopher Moore, a professor of brain science at Brown University. \u201cShining light on the brain is used to measure activity \u2014 usually through a process called fluorescence \u2014 or to drive activity in cells to test what role they play. But shooting lasers at the brain has down sides when it comes to experiments, often requiring fancy hardware and a lower rate of success. We figured we could use bioluminescence instead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With a major grant from the National Science Foundation, the Bioluminescence Hub at Brown\u2019s Carney Institute for Brain Science launched in 2017 based on collaborations between Moore (associate director of the Carney Institute), Diane Lipscombe (the institute\u2019s director), Ute Hochgeschwender (at Central Michigan University) and Nathan Shaner (at the University of California San Diego).<\/p>\n<p>The scientists\u2019 goal was to develop and disseminate neuroscience tools based on giving nervous system cells the ability to make and respond to light.<\/p>\n<p>In a study published in Nature Methods, the team described a bioluminescence tool it recently developed. Called the Ca2+ BioLuminescence Activity Monitor \u2014 or \u201cCaBLAM,\u201d for short \u2014 the tool captures single-cell and subcellular activity at high speeds and works well in mice and zebrafish, allowing multi-hour recordings and removing the need for external light.<\/p>\n<p>More said that Shaner, an associate professor in neuroscience and in pharmacology at U.C. San Diego, led the development of the molecular device that became CaBLAM: \u201cCaBLAM is a really amazing molecule that Nathan created,\u201d Moore said. \u201cIt lives up to its name.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Measuring ongoing activity of living brain cells is essential to understanding the functions of biological organisms, Moore said. The most common current approach uses imaging with fluorescence-based genetically encoded calcium-ion indicators.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/is-bioluminescence-the-key-to-safe-effective-brain-imaging\">Continue reading \u201cIs bioluminescence the key to safe, effective brain imaging?\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A decade ago, a group of scientists had the literally brilliant idea to use bioluminescent light to visualize brain activity. \u201cWe started thinking: \u2018What if we could light up the brain from the inside?\u2019\u201d said Christopher Moore, a professor of brain science at Brown University. \u201cShining light on the brain is used to measure activity [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":701,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/701"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}