opsins

This year’s winners are Dieter Oesterhelt, Peter Hegemann, Karl Deisseroth, Drew Weissman, Katalin Karikó, and David Baltimore.

The roundworm uses cues from visible light to help avoid eating toxic bacteria with a distinguishing hue.

The silver spinyfin has an extraordinary diversity of rod photopigments, which researchers propose may allow it to see color in the deep, dark sea.

The tentacles that arise from these feathery fan worms’ heads are equipped with eyeballs capable of sensing shadows and movement.  

Squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses possess vision machinery in their skin.

An account of the path to realizing tools for controlling brain circuits with light.

The optogenetic toolset is composed of genetically encoded molecules that, when targeted to specific neurons in the brain, enable the electrical activity of those neurons to be driven or silenced by light. 

This animation illustrates optogenetics—a radical new technology for controlling brain activity with light.