Latest Optogenetics Stories
'Out of the blue' discovery marks new direction in phototransduction studiesA UC Irvine research team led by Todd C. Holmes has discovered a second form of phototransduction light sensing in cells that is derived from vitamin B2. This discovery may reveal new information about cellular processes controlled by light.For more than 100 years, it had been believed that the phototransduction process was solely based on a chemical derived from vitamin A called retinal. Phototransduction is the...
Scientists commandeer a freely moving organism's nervous system without wires or electrodesPhysicists and bioengineers have developed an optical instrument allowing them to control the behavior of a worm just by shining a tightly focused beam of light at individual neurons inside the organism.The pioneering optogenetic research, by a team at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, is described this week in the journal Nature...
Researchers are using inexpensive components from ordinary liquid crystal display (LCD) projectors to control the brain and muscles of tiny organisms, including freely moving worms. Red, green and blue lights from a projector activate light-sensitive microbial proteins that are genetically engineered into the worms, allowing the researchers to switch neurons on and off like light bulbs and turn muscles on and off like engines.Use of the LCD technology to control small animals advances the...
Harvard University neurobiologists have created mice that can "smell" light, providing a potent new tool that could help researchers better understand the neural basis of olfaction.The work, described this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience, has implications for the future study of smell and of complex perception systems that do not lend themselves to easy study with traditional methods."It makes intuitive sense to use odors to study smell," says Venkatesh N. Murthy,...
Researchers at Stanford University were able to use light to induce normal patterns of muscle contraction, in a study involving bioengineered mice whose nerve-cell surfaces are coated with special light-sensitive proteins.The new approach allows scientists to more accurately reproduce muscle firing order, making it a valuable research tool. The investigators, from Stanford's Schools of Medicine and of Engineering, also believe this technique could someday spawn practical applications, from...
A team of University of Oklahoma researchers studying neurobiology in fruit flies (Drosophila) has developed a new method for understanding brain function with potential applications in studies of human neurological diseases.The work is carried out in the laboratory of Bing Zhang, a professor in the OU Department of Zoology, using fruit flies as a model for understanding what happens in the human brain because they share thousands of the same genes with a human.Zhang and his students use...
The ability to diagnose and treat brain dysfunction without surgery, may rely on a new method of noninvasive brain stimulation using pulsed ultrasound developed by a team of scientists led by William "Jamie" Tyler, a neuroscientist at Arizona State University. The approach, published in the journal Neuron on June 9, shows that pulsed ultrasound not only stimulates action potentials in intact motor cortex in mice but it also "elicits motor responses comparable to those only...
Like a motorist who knows that the "check engine" light indicates something important but ill-defined is happening, neuroscientists have relied heavily on an incompletely understood technology called functional magnetic resonance imaging to show them what the brain is doing when people respond to different stimuli. The non-invasive technology offers a window into the physiology of human cognition and emotion, but "” without a satisfying explanation of how some common fMRI signals...
Recently, brain researchers have gained a powerful new way to troubleshoot neural circuits associated with depression, Parkinson's disease and other conditions in small animals such as rats. They use an optogenetics technology, invented at Stanford University, that precisely turns select brain cells on or off with flashes of light. Although useful, the optogenetics tool set has been limited.In a paper to be published in the April 2 edition of Cell, the Stanford researchers describe major...
New tools show potential for treating brain disordersNeuroscientists at MIT have developed a powerful new class of tools to reversibly shut down brain activity using different colors of light. When targeted to specific neurons, these tools could potentially lead to new treatments for the abnormal brain activity associated with disorders such as chronic pain, epilepsy, brain injury, and Parkinson's disease.The tools work on the principle that such disorders might be best treated by silencing,...
