Infographic: Increasing Optogenetic Precision

A localizable opsin protein enables single-neuron stimulation.

Written byRuth Williams

| 1 min read

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Precision illumination techniques target light to individual neuronal cell bodies, but neighboring cells may be activated if their dendrites or axons lie nearby. Unlike regular opsins, which are distributed throughout the entire neuron, cell body–localized opsins, such as those described by Christopher Baker of the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (eLife, 5:e14193, 2016) and now Edward Boyden’s team (Nat Neurosci, 20:1796–1806, 2017), prevent such stray activation. Boyden and his collaborators also use a more responsive channelrhodopsin for high-speed firing.

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Meet the Author

Ruth Williams
Ruth is a freelance journalist. Before freelancing, Ruth was a news editor for the Journal of Cell Biology in New York and an assistant editor for Nature Reviews Neuroscience in London. Prior to that, she was a bona fide pipette-wielding, test tube–shaking, lab coat–shirking research scientist. She has a PhD in genetics from King’s College London, and was a postdoc in stem cell biology at Imperial College London. Today she lives and writes in Connecticut.
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