• Question: How exactly do you grow the neourons from the brain? and also what is your dog called?! he looks very cute!

    Asked by loverara to Jemma on 14 Mar 2011. This question was also asked by oliveerrrrr, bored.
    • Photo: Jemma Ransom

      Jemma Ransom answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      Neurons are really easy to grow outside the brain. What I do is dissect the area of the brain I’m interested in, this gives you a chunk of tissue, so what I have to do next is break all the cells apart without damaging them which I can do with various chemicals. I then put them into a cell culture dish (I’ve posted a picture of this to my profile page if you’re interested). They require nutrients and a warm environment to grow so I add some medium with all the goodies they need to the flask and incubate this at body temperature. After they’ve grown up I can then use them in my experiments. There’s another picture on my profile page of a neuron that I’ve added a flourescent probe too, this is usually the type of experiment I do with my neurons.

      As for my dog, his name is Zak, and thank you he is definitely as cute as he looks!

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