Using light to manipulate neurons

[Pythagorean]

neat trick:

http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin/may2010/features/moves3.html

If ChR2 is a blue activator, halorhodopsin (NpHR) is a yellow silencer. It was discovered in Natronobacterium pharaonis, a bacterium isolated from a high-alkaline, high-salt lake in Egypt. In the bacterium, the light-driven NpHR channels pump chloride ions into the cell, a flow that ultimately helps drive the synthesis of ATP, the cell's biochemical fuel. Transferred into neurons, however, these channels respond to yellow light by hyperpolarizing the cells, effectively silencing them.

 

[berkeman]

Is this related to the work on optogenetics? I'm just starting to read about this...

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=406479

.

 

[Pythagorean]

absolutely, we could probably merge the threads.

Deisseroth, who came up with the term optogenetics, was featured along side Lim and Scanziani in the HHMI article I picked this up from.
Here's Deisseroth's original paper:

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/26/41/10380

 

[Pythagorean]

I'm currently examining the Morris Lecar model, which still seems to have a lot of open parameters in it. It seems this kind of technology would make testing the consequences of the coupled nonlinear dynamics much, much easier and may even provide insight to reasonable parameter ranges.