BIO SCI 38 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Biological Neural Network, Cerebral Circulation, Long-Term Memory
1 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
A light switch for neurons ted talk. Activating neurons by light by incorporating dna from light sensitive bacteria to a viral vector and injecting it into a specific type of neuron. Optogenetics- controlling neurons and neural circuits with light. Take the dna from a protein where the gates open in response to blue light (algae), put in a neuron, make it fire by shining blue light. Get the dna (construct of promoter and gene). Put it in viral vector: inject into brain. Rhodopsin- blue light opens channel and na+ goes in. Halorhodopsin- yellow light opens channel and cl- goes in. Pyramidal neurons release glutamate and are excitatory. Activating inhibitory neuron with rhodopsin has the same effect as inactivating pyramidal neurons. Has temporal control, advantage over drugs, selectively activate/inactivate, widely used in memory and drug addiction. Molecular ways to alter gene expression in different neurons.
