Last month, I had the opportunity to head down to the 15th Annual Future of Light Symposium held at Boston University’s Photonics Center. With a focus on neurophotonics, approximately 211 industry experts and novices alike came together to learn about the direction in which optogenetics and imaging are heading.
Optogenetics—which pairs genetic and optical methods to control specific events of interest in targeted cells of living tissue, even in freely moving animals—was the focus of the first half of the day, featuring renowned research from Ed S. Boyden of MIT; Adam Cohen of Harvard University; Alan Horsager of the University of Southern California and EoS Neuroscience, (which he co-founded); and John Spudich of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.
Boyden discussed his team’s work in optogenetics, which aims to seek better drugs for treating brain disorders at less cost. Specifically, he described creating a fiber-optic implant by coupling optical fibers to LEDs, and shining its light on neurons linked with channelrhodopsin in mice, which can reveal 3-D neural activity patterns. The discovery could create targets for treating several brain disorders in humans. In mice the technique has cured them of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and certain forms of blindness.
And Cohen’s work certainly piqued my interest, as it had been published in Nature Methods just three days prior as well as covered briefly on BioOptics World (see Altered neurons fluoresce as they fire, with potential to speed drug development). He discussed using a gene from a Dead Sea microorganism to produce a voltage-indicating protein (VIP) that fluoresces at <500 µs when exposed to the electrical signal in a neuron. The approach allowed Cohen and his colleagues to trace the propagation of signals through the neuron. The work shows immediate promise for drug discovery, but holds future promise for genetic disorder diagnosis.
Lee Mather, Associate Editor
