Mimicking chemical complexities

(JHU) researchers have devised a micro-scale tool, a lab on a chip designed to mimic the chemical complexities of the brain.

According to JHU, the system should help scientists better understand how nerve cells in the brain work together to form the nervous system.

‘The chip we've developed will make experiments on nerve cells more simple to conduct and to control,’ claimed Andre Levchenko, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical engineering at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering and faculty affiliate of the Institute for NanoBioTechnology.

Nerve cells are said to decide which direction to grow by sensing the chemical cues flowing through their environment as well as those attached to the surfaces that surround them. The chip, which is made of a plastic-like substance and covered with a glass lid, features a system of channels and wells that allow researchers to control the flow of specific chemical cocktails around single nerve cells.