Q&A: How can advances in tissue clearing and optogenetics contribute to our understanding of normal and diseased biology?
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: Mammalian organs comprise a variety of cells that interact with each other and have distinct biological roles. Access to evaluate and perturb intact biological systems at the cellular and molecular levels is essential to fully understand their functioning in normal and diseased conditions, yet technical limitations have constrained most research to small pieces of tissue. Tissue clearing and optogenetics can help overcome this hurdle: tissue clearing affords optical interrogation of whole organs at the molecular level, and optogenetics enables the scalable control and measurement of cellular activity with light. In this Q&A, we delineate recent advances and practical challenges associated with these two techniques when applied body-wide.
Source: BMC Biology
Institution: California Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Biophysics
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,690
Funders: California Institute of Technology, Life Sciences Research Foundation, Heritage Medical Research Institute, Good Ventures Foundation, Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Awards: Intact Circuit Assessment of Aging Dopamine Neurons vis Optogenetics and CLARITY, A Peripheral Route for Gut to Brain Propagation of Pathologic Alpha-Synuclein in Parkinson's Disease, Neuromodulation and Neurodegeneration: the Missing Link and Mechanisms of Action, Comprehensive Structural and Functional Mapping of the Mammalian Cardiac Nervous System
OpenAlex ID: W2760079536