Neuron Traffic moving through a cell - YouTube

Video depicting the flow of transport vesicles containing NgCAM, using a 16-color filter. Here, the intensity of the pixels (and thus protein concentration) varies from white (very high) to purple (very low). (Courtesy of Don Arnold and Sarmad Al-Bassam)

Using bioluminescent proteins from a jellyfish, scientists have lit up the inside of a neuron and captured footage of proteins moving throughout the cell.

The video offers a rare peek at how proteins, the brain’s building blocks, are directed through neurons to renew its structure.

“Your brain is being disassembled and reassembled every day,” says Don Arnold, associate professor of molecular and computational biology at University of Southern California (USC), and corresponding author of an article about the research published in Cell Reports.

“One week from today, your brain will be made up of completely different proteins than it is today,” Arnold says. “This video shows the process. We’ve known that it was happening, but now we can watch it happen.”