TOPICSOptogenetics

Optogenetics

Shriya Srinivasan is a PhD student in medical engineering and medical physics at the MIT Media Lab and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.
Science

Leg nerves activated by light offer new path to restoring mobility

Amit Malewar

MIT researchers recently have shown that nerves made to express proteins that can be activated by light can produce limb movements utilizing cues produced...

pDawn control of the adhesin Ag43 enables light-controlled deposition of biofilm onto surfaces. (A) Ag43 was inserted downstream of pDawn control. Escherichia coli with pDawn-Ag43 can be optically stimulated with a projector to express Ag43 and to form biofilm at surfaces. (B) Cells engineered with the pDawn-Ag43 construct form biofilm contingent upon illumination (***P < 0.001). Wild-type and pDawn controls fail to form significant biofilm, and pBAD-Ag43 expression forms biofilm regardless of illumination. Representative 96-well crystal violet stains are shown below. (C) Increasing illumination intensity increases biofilm formation, saturating past ∼41 μW/cm2. Dashed curve, fit with Monod model. (D) Increasing illumination time increases biofilm formation up to approximately 8 h. Dashed curve, linear fit. (B–D, error bars represent SD, n = 4 wells.)
Technology

Scientists developed a new way to shape the growth of bacterial communities

Amit Malewar

By using light and genetically engineered bacteria, Stanford scientists have shaped the growth of bacterial communities. They have developed a technique that renders intricate...

Areas of the brain that get input from the eyes can be hijacked to control something outside the brain, such as a computer that generates a tone. Yellow arrows represent feedback between the rat’s visual cortex and striatum, which is key to learning new tasks. Ryan Neely image.
Science

Retraining neurons to take action

Amit Malewar

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley along with Columbia University and the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Lisbon, Portugal have demonstrated the astounding...

Scientists Discovered How the Brain Selectively Remembers New Places
Science

Scientists Discovered How the Brain Selectively Remembers New Places

Amit Malewar

When you go into a room, your brain is barraged with tactile data. On the off chance that the room is a place you...

stress
Health

Stress can Lead to Risky Decisions

Amit Malewar

Making decisions is not always easy especially in stressful situations. MIT neuroscientists have now discovered that making decisions in this type of situation leads to high-risk, high-payoff...

MIT Neuroscientists Build Case for New Theory of Memory Formation
Science

MIT Neuroscientists Build Case for New Theory of Memory Formation

Amit Malewar

Putting efforts towards revising memory models, MIT scientists proposed in a new study, in which they detailed how these silent engrams are formed and re-activated. Memory...

Gene Therapy Shows Promise for Reversing Blindness
Health

Gene Therapy Shows Promise for Reversing Blindness

Amit Malewar

A new study by the University of Oxford suggests that it is possible to reprogram cells at the back of the eye to cure blindness....

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