c-Fos as a marker of neuronal activation - pluses & minuses

Yes, I know, c-Fos for the third time! But bear with me because a new exciting topic of electrophysiology will be coming shortly as I'll be learning that technique.

c-Fos or other markers used in our lab?

In our lab, we haven't used any other markers of neuronal activation (despite researching this alternative last year). Other markers crop up in papers from time to time but c-Fos is best established and most widely used in our field and therefore, works best for our purposes.


Still, what are the pluses & minuses of using c-Fos as a marker of neuronal activity?

+ c-Fos marks recently active neurons

+ can be used together with physiology research and immunohistochemistry techniques

+ is best established and most widely used in our field so we can compare our results with other people's results

- it isn't a direct marker of neuronal activity

- some neurons may be acitvated but c-Fos doesn't have to be transcribed and translated i.e. c-Fos isn't in a pathway for all stimuli/responses

- time course of c-Fos expression might differ cell-to-cell and response-to-response so it needs to be established individually for each experiment