Boyden Edward S
Media Lab, McGovern Institute, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Biological Engineering MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA.
F1000 Biol Rep. 2011;3:11. doi: 10.3410/B3-11. Epub 2011 May 3.
Understanding how different kinds of neuron in the brain work together to implement sensations, feelings, thoughts, and movements, and how deficits in specific kinds of neuron result in brain diseases, has long been a priority in basic and clinical neuroscience. "Optogenetic" tools are genetically encoded molecules that, when targeted to specific neurons in the brain, enable their activity to be driven or silenced by light. These molecules are microbial opsins, seven-transmembrane proteins adapted from organisms found throughout the world, which react to light by transporting ions across the lipid membranes of cells in which they are genetically expressed. These tools are enabling the causal assessment of the roles that different sets of neurons play within neural circuits, and are accordingly being used to reveal how different sets of neurons contribute to the emergent computational and behavioral functions of the brain. These tools are also being explored as components of prototype neural control prosthetics capable of correcting neural circuit computations that have gone awry in brain disorders. This review gives an account of the birth of optogenetics and discusses the technology and its applications.
了解大脑中不同类型的神经元如何协同工作以实现感觉、情感、思维和运动，以及特定类型的神经元缺陷如何导致脑部疾病，长期以来一直是基础和临床神经科学的重点。“光遗传学”工具是经过基因编码的分子，当靶向大脑中的特定神经元时，能够通过光来驱动或沉默它们的活动。这些分子是微生物视蛋白，是从世界各地发现的生物体中获取的七跨膜蛋白，它们通过在其基因表达的细胞的脂质膜上运输离子来对光作出反应。这些工具能够对不同神经元组在神经回路中所起的作用进行因果评估，因此正被用于揭示不同神经元组如何促成大脑的新兴计算和行为功能。这些工具也正在作为原型神经控制假体的组件进行探索，这些假体能够纠正脑部疾病中出现异常的神经回路计算。这篇综述介绍了光遗传学的诞生，并讨论了该技术及其应用。
