On and Off Switches for Cells (IMAGE)

Stanford Medicine

On and Off Switches for Cells

Caption

In the excitatory opsin (left), the red depicts a channel of negatively charged amino acids that draws positive sodium ions into the neuron to turn it on. The new bioengineered inhibitory opsin (right) is more blue to denote its channel of positively charged amino acids that draws in negative chloride ions to turn the neuron off.

Credit

Deisseroth lab

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