Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Upgrading an electrophysiology rig with a photostimulation apparatus for synapse specific optogenetics. The principal challenge for neuroscience is to understand how our thoughts, memories, feelings and even our sense of self can be created from the fundamental building blocks of the brain: synapses. We will assist this effort by creating new tools that selectively activate synapses. In support of the current submission to the NSERC Discovery Grant program, "Synapse specific optogenetic and chemogenetic tool development," this equipment request will upgrade an electrophysiology rig to allow for synapse selective photostimulation during whole cell patch clamp recording from neurons. Previously, I constructed and used a similar rig at the Janelia Research Campus, near Washington, DC, which also supported a neuroscience tool development project. The Discovery Grant proposal uses the natural logic of synapse construction to create new optogenetic tools, which will embed themselves at specific synapses in the brain. The upgrade would allow for the testing, validation and eventually application of these cutting edge optogenetic tools for neuroscience. During the testing and validation phase, we will direct a beam of light to a subset of synapses, activating these optogenetic tools only locally and verifying the tool specificity. With this additional rigorous testing, we can ensure that when using these new tools, scientists generate high quality, meaningful data, accelerating the pace of neuroscience research. Past the completion of the Discovery Grant program, the proposed equipment upgrades will continue to aid new projects, as application of the new tools accelerates our investigation of the neural circuits underlying motivated behaviors. The equipment provides a resource for electrophysiologists in the local community who wish to apply more sophisticated methodologies to their neuroscience projects. Finally, this cutting edge equipment will allow us to train a new generation of scientists with a rare set of specialty skillsets: tool development, protein engineering, electrophysiology, and optogenetics.