Cho Yong Ku, Li Dan
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
Institute for Systems Genomics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
Methods Mol Biol. 2016;1408:1-17. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-3512-3_1.
The discovery of light-gated ion channels and their application to controlling neural activities have had a transformative impact on the field of neuroscience. In recent years, the concept of using light-activated proteins to control biological processes has greatly diversified into other fields, driven by the natural diversity of photoreceptors and decades of knowledge obtained from their biophysical characterization. In this chapter, we will briefly discuss the origin and development of optogenetics and highlight the basic concepts that make it such a powerful technology. We will review how these enabling concepts have developed over the past decade, and discuss future perspectives.
光门控离子通道的发现及其在控制神经活动中的应用对神经科学领域产生了变革性影响。近年来，受光感受器的自然多样性以及从其生物物理特性研究中获得的数十年知识的推动，利用光激活蛋白控制生物过程的概念已极大地拓展到其他领域。在本章中，我们将简要讨论光遗传学的起源与发展，并重点介绍使其成为如此强大技术的基本概念。我们将回顾这些支撑性概念在过去十年中的发展情况，并探讨未来前景。
