Wietek Jonas, Prigge Matthias
Experimental Biophysics, Humboldt University Berlin, Invalidenstrasse 42, 10115, Berlin, Germany.
Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Herzel 234, 76100, Rehovot, Israel.
Methods Mol Biol. 2016;1408:141-65. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-3512-3_10.
After the discovery of Channelrhodopsin, a light-gated ion channel, only a few people saw the diverse range of applications for such a protein. Now, more than 10 years later Channelrhodopsins have become widely accepted as the ultimate tool to control the membrane potential of excitable cells via illumination. The demand for more application-specific Channelrhodopsin variants started a race between protein engineers to design improved variants. Even though many engineered variants have undisputable advantages compared to wild-type variants, many users are alienated by the tremendous amount of new variants and their perplexing names. Here, we review new variants whose efficacy has already been proven in neurophysiological experiments, or variants which are likely to extend the optogenetic toolbox. Variants are described based on their mechanistic and operational properties in terms of expression, kinetics, ion selectivity, and wavelength responsivity.
在发现光门控离子通道视紫红质之后，只有少数人看到了这种蛋白质的广泛应用范围。如今，十多年过去了，视紫红质已被广泛认可为通过光照来控制可兴奋细胞膜电位的终极工具。对更多特定应用的视紫红质变体的需求引发了蛋白质工程师之间设计改良变体的竞争。尽管许多工程变体与野生型变体相比具有无可争议的优势，但大量的新变体及其令人困惑的名称让许多用户望而却步。在这里，我们回顾了那些在神经生理学实验中已经证明其功效的新变体，或者那些可能会扩展光遗传学工具箱的变体。根据它们在表达、动力学、离子选择性和波长响应性方面的机制和操作特性来描述这些变体。
