Nature Communications (online and subscription only) offers an MIT study on synapse building technology:
Synaptic function is affected in many brain diseases and disorders. Technologies for large-scale synapse assays can facilitate identification of drug leads. Here we report a ‘synapse microarray’ technology that enables ultra-sensitive, high-throughput and quantitative screening of synaptogenesis. Our platform enables the induction of synaptic structures in regular arrays by precise positioning of non-neuronal cells expressing synaptic proteins, while allowing neurites to grow freely around these cells. The technology increases by tenfold the sensitivity of the traditional assays, and simultaneously decreases the time required to capture synaptogenic events by an order of magnitude.
You can pay the $32 bucks to read the whole article, or go to the MIT site and read the PR take on it.
At a synapse, a neuron sends signals to one or more cells by releasing chemicals called neurotransmitters, which influence the activity of the recipient cell. Scientists can induce neurons grown in a lab dish to form synapses, but this usually produces a jumble of connections that is difficult to study.
In the new setup devised by Yanik and his colleagues, presynaptic neurons (those that send messages across a synapse) are grown in individual compartments on a lab dish. The compartments have only one opening, into a tiny channel that leads to another compartment. The presynaptic neuron sends its long axon through the channel into the other compartment, where it can form synaptic connections with cells arranged in a grid. “That way we can induce synapses in very well-defined positions,” Yanik says.
Using this technique, the researchers can create hundreds of thousands of synapses on a single lab dish, then use them to test the effects of potential drug compounds. This technique can detect changes in synaptic strength with 10 times more sensitivity than existing methods.