Grant: Foundation Grant

Life on the earth's surface is bathed in the white light of the Sun. This light provides energy to support life through photosynthesis, but life on earth has evolved to harness light in a myriad of other critical ways. For example, receptors in our eyes respond to certain wavelengths of light, such as those reflected from the corals of a tropical reef. The receptors send electrical signals to our brain that we perceive as colour. We are harnessing light as a research tool to understand how our nervous systems work. Light-based tools will advance our understanding of many nervous system disorders, such as neurodegenerative diseases, brain damage from stroke, and chronic pain. Biologists can now borrow natural systems that interact with light and transplant them in mice and other organisms that serve as models of human disease. These transplanted systems are called "optogenetic tools," and they have revolutionized our ability to visualize and manipulate biology in live animals. They have a particularly big impact in neuroscience. Optogenetic tools now help neuroscientists to watch the electrical signals from thousands of individual neurons in a model animal's brain. They also let researchers effectively write a memory into a mouse brain using light - a capability that was in the realm of science fiction until just a few years ago. Knowledge that we gain from these studies in animals with optogenetic tools can be applied to treating nervous system disorders in humans. My research program develops new optogenetic tools for neuroscience research. My speciality is borrowing the proteins that give coral their colour and altering them to create innovative research tools. One theme of my research is equipping neuroscientists to visualize the chemical communication between neurons of the brain that increases or decreases neuron activity. Another theme is creating more subtle and specific methods to activate key biochemical processes in neurons with light.