Optogenetics

Therapeutic Potential of Optogenetic Treatment for Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis

“…However, these systems were too complex to manipulate and the delay between light exposure and action potential firing was highly variable ranging from a few hundred milliseconds to tens of seconds (Lyon, 2013). Focus shifted to ionotropic microbial opsins as they exhibit fast, direct light-dependent ion conduction across the cell membrane (Mudiayi, Wong, & Gruber, 2015). Furthermore, microbial opsins allow reversible control of neurons on the timescale of individual action potentials, which was lacking in earlier methods (Boyden Zhang, Bamberg, Nagel, & Deisseroth, 2005).…”

“…Ultimately, furthering this therapeutic tool is limited by the knowledge present for specific symptoms as well as their mechanisms (Bryson et al, 2016;Jazayeri & Remington, 2016;Mohanty & Lakshminarayananan, 2015;Mudiayi et al, 2015). Just as optogenetics may be used as a therapeutic tool, it can be utilized to understand these symptoms as it is currently used as an investigative tool (Carter & de Lecea, 2011;Mohanty & Lakshminarayananan, 2015;Mudiayi et al, 2015).…”

“…Just as optogenetics may be used as a therapeutic tool, it can be utilized to understand these symptoms as it is currently used as an investigative tool (Carter & de Lecea, 2011;Mohanty & Lakshminarayananan, 2015;Mudiayi et al, 2015). A first step to identifying how photostimulation can lead to therapeutic effects could ultimately be using optogenetics to understand individual symptoms by experimenting with its circuitry and inhibiting or activating symptom pathways.…”

“…This control can also be used by activating inhibitory circuitries, creating an antagonist effect on the region or function of interest. Molecularly, once the optical light is shone on the brain region of interest, photostimulation increased ion transport across the cellular membrane by either opening an ion channel or by actively pumping ions (Mudiayi et al, 2015).…”

Competition between cyclization and unusual Norrish type I and type II nitro-acyl migration pathways in the photouncaging of 1-acyl-7-nitroindoline revealed by computations

“…This is widely referred to as spatio-temporal control [1][2][3][4] . Techniques that possess spatio-temporal advantages have found numerous applications ranging from medicinal chemistry fields with photo targeted therapeutics 1,3 , such as cancer treatments [5][6][7][8] or photoinitiated catalysis 8 , and to the neuroscience where it becomes critical to activate selected neurons to study specific pathways 1,9-12 . In the emerging field of optogenetics, light-sensitive channel rhodopsin receptors are genetically engineered in selected neurons rendering them light responsive 3,11,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19] . Additional methods of firing specific neurons employed a diverse array of photocleavable protecting groups attached to critically active moieties of agonists [20][21][22][23] .…”