My colleague Jean-Rène Martin (we spent some years in the Heisenberg lab in Würzburg) and his co-workers at the CNRS in France have developed a new method for imaging activity in the fly brain ( Drosophila). The researcher published their work in the online open-access publication system PLoS One. They based their development on a novel fusion protein of aequorin and green fluorescent protein (GFP). The aequorin-GFP construct is a calcium-sensitive protein, which in the presence of its co-factor, coelenterazine, will emit light when there is a change in the calcium concentration of a cell; for example, following neuronal activation. The method is based in previous attempts but boosts light output over 500-fold. In this way, one can monitor the activity in the fly brain. In contrast to other methods, one can image for long periods of time, say, 24 or even 48h. This is particularly interesting for me and I'm thinking about a collaboration with Jean-Rène on mapping spontaneous activity in the Drosophila brain. Such a project would be very helpful in the next step of our project on the mechanisms of generating spontaneous behavior.
There is a great press-release on EurekAlert on this fantastic new technique as well!