The team headed by Prof. Chen Zhong recently made achievements in the research on the structure and function of histaminergic neural networks. The study, "Whole-Brain Mapping of Histaminergic Projections in Mouse Brain", was published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The first author is Lin Wenkai, a postdoc of the ZCMU School of Pharmaceutical Sciences; Xu Lingyu, a PhD student from Zhejiang University, is the co-first author; Prof. Chen Zhong serves as the corresponding author.

Based on the nature of histaminergic neural circuits, the team is the first to reconstruct the whole-brain 3D precise structure of histaminergic projections in the mouse brain by using fluorescence microoptical sectioning tomography, viral neuronal tracing, optogenetics, specific histamine probes, and other technologies. It also proved the correlation between histamine release and histaminergic fiber density. The research findings build a solid foundation for future precise functional analyses of histaminergic neural circuits and shed light into the histaminergic neural system.

Academician Luo Qingming, President of Hainan University, the research teams headed by Prof. Gong Hui and Prof. Li An’an from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, etc. also contributed to the study. In addition, the research received much support from Prof. Li Yulong from the School of Life Sciences, Peking University, and Prof. Qiu Zilong from the School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Paper link: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2216231120