matterhacker

Came across this neat story from WIRED about Harvard scientists trying to map the human brain. Looks like a nice idea applying automation (a la genomics) to mapping of brain tissue.

ATLUM uses a lathe and specialized knife to create long, thin strips of brain cells that can be imaged by an electron microscope. Software will eventually montage the images, creating an ultrahigh-resolution 3-D reconstruction of the mouse brain, allowing scientists to see features only 50 nanometers across.

Ha! Sounds like some automated alien brain slicing device straight out of a sci-fi movie! Anyways, it’s quite an interesting reverse engineering problem. It seems that automated techniques like those used in bio-informatics are being applied in really unique ways to bio imaging.