Inside Duke Medicine
Tracey wins McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award
posted August 3rd, 2010
Daniel Tracey, Ph.D., has won a 2010 McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award. He is being honored for the promise of his work to map the connections of neurons (nerve cells) in the brain.
To do this, he is devising an easy-to-use method to determine which neurons are linked. The award funding will be $200,000 over the next two years. Three other scientists won the prize this summer.
To understand the function of neuronal circuits, it is first necessary to know which neurons are interconnected, and no easy method exists yet.
“We are developing a viral gene expression system tohelp uncover neuron-to-neuron connections,” Tracey said.
His laboratory will use rhabdoviruses that have been encoded with certain genes that will help to explore the science of nerve cells. This will allow the researchers to trace the cells’ connections and manipulate the activity of interconnected neurons.
If this approach is successful with fruit flies, Tracey hopes the same techniques will be useful for studies of mammalian brains, opening doors for brain science in general.
The McKnight awards have been given annually since 1999 to advance the range of technologies available for studying the brain and the diseases that affect it.
The Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Awards support scientists working on novel and unusual approaches that can expand the range of technologies available to the neuroscience research community. Technologies developed through McKnight support must ultimately be made available to other scientists.