Jo Martin

What's been the highlight of your day?

Today has been a really good day. It started with a stunning range and depth of work presented in poster form, with delegates walking round and discussing the posters in person with the authors. This discussion is interactive and very creative.

Which presentation did you find most interesting?

Once in a while you see a presentation that gets everyone really excited, and that happened today. Jeff Lichtman presented his work on the use of fluorescently labelled nerve fibres. Like most brilliant ideas, this is beautifully simple.

This method of ‘colour coding’ neurons and their axons makes tracing their paths much easier, and most importantly allows nerve axons and the areas where they contact the muscle to be studied during life and over time.

The initial work labelled nerve fibres in green or yellow, but the new version of the method allows individual neurons to be labelled with different colours, the so-called ‘Brainbow’, so that you can now follow individual nerve axons right up to individual muscle fibres.

Who has made the biggest impression on you?

Lichtman is my hot tip for future Nobel Laureate. These techniques are going to transform the way we can study the nervous system in development, in health and in diseases such as ALS/MND. You heard it here first!

More information on Jeff Litchtman and colleagues research and be found on the ALS Association's website.