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Also, we can't zap lazers at living cells to see what their doing because it kills them, so actually making the discoveries is challenging.
by charlchi 8y ago
Also, we can't zap lazers at living cells to see what their doing because it kills them, so actually making the discoveries is challenging.
- carapace 8y agoAhem, Optogenetics > Optogenetics is a biological technique which involves the use of light to control cells in living tissue, typically neurons, that have been genetically modified to express light-sensitive ion channels. It is a neuromodulation method that uses a combination of techniques from optics and genetics to control and monitor the activities of individual neurons in living tissue—even within freely-moving animals—and to precisely measure these manipulation effects in real-time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optogenetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optogenetics
- Balgair 8y agoTo be fair, you have to be very careful with the power of the laser as you can easily fry what you are looking at.
- charlchi 8y agoExactly. I think he was missing my point: Cells and biological structures of that size have always been easy to look at, it's not so easy to do the same with smaller structures, like DNA.
- Balgair 8y agoYeah, with DNA, you literally have to x-ray it to 'see' anything. That tends to be rather destructive. And as science goes along, we are seeing that the smaller stuff is really really important, like scaffolding proteins in synapses.
- Feuilles_Mortes 8y agoActually we do this in the lab I work in. Look up laser ablation of neurons in C. elegans.