title: Following Optogenetic Dimerizers and Quantitative Prospects.
abstract: Optogenetics describes the use of genetically encoded photosensitive proteins to direct intended biological processes with light in recombinant and native systems. While most of these light-responsive proteins were originally discovered in photosynthetic organisms, the past few decades have been punctuated by experiments that not only commandeer but also engineer and enhance these natural tools to explore a wide variety of physiological questions. In addition, the ability to tune dynamic range and kinetic rates of optogenetic actuators is a challenging question that is heavily explored with computational methods devised to facilitate optimization of these systems. Here, we explain the basic mechanisms of a few popular photodimerizing optogenetic systems, discuss applications, compare optogenetic tools against more traditional chemical methods, and propose a simple quantitative understanding of how actuators exert their influence on targeted processes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Electronic address: jniu4@jhu.edu.
authors.forename: Jacqueline
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Niu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.
authors.forename: Manu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ben Johny
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; Department of Physiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland.
authors.forename: Ivy E
authors.initials: IE
authors.lastname: Dick
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; Department of Cell Biology, School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; The Center for Cell Dynamics, Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Saitama, Japan. Electronic address: jctinoue@jhmi.edu.
authors.forename: Takanari
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Inoue
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D008164:Luminescent Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D008958:Models, Molecular; D062308:Optogenetics / Q000379:methods; D010944:Plants; D055503:Protein Multimerization
chemical_list: D008164:Luminescent Proteins