Ever see those old action TV shows where the hero has to diffuse a bomb? He calls his friend and his friend says something like "whatever you do, don't cut the green wire!". Well, what if the wires were all the same color? Poor hero!
This is exactly the problem that neuroscientists have had for years - how to figure out what connects to what when everything looks the same. This problem was addressed in the article by combinatorially expressing fluorescent proteins in mouse neural tissue. There are just a few FPs used, but each cell expresses the set in different proportion, allowing (I think) more than a hundred visually identifiable colors! Check out some of the pictures - they're more colorful than a hippie van...
Wow! That's a problem I'd just never even considered before. It we could figure out what went where, that could potentially give us so much more insight as to how the brain works.
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