"The ambition is to take the brain apart into its component cell types and have it reassembled in the test tube."
Dr Martin Raff, Professor of Biology at University College, London, is unlikely to achieve that in his lifetime, but he has been able to use what is known about the immune system to identify and study the behaviour of virtually every cell type in the nervous system. In conversation with John Maddox, he reflects on the way antibodies which fight disease can be used as labels for brain cells.
Producer Louise Purslow