Centre for Developmental Genetics, School of Medicine and Biomedical Science, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. a.j.furley@sheffield.ac.uk
A key problem in using genetics to dissect the wiring of the mammalian brain lies in discovering which of the billions of neural connections have been disrupted by a particular mutation. A novel gene-trap approach targets the genes involved in brain wiring and labels the axons of neurons expressing those genes, enabling the effects of mutations to be observed directly.