Karl Deiseroth

In a “web exclusive,” Scientific American published an in-depth article by Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, on optogenetics, a research technology he invented. Diesseroth writes:

Optogenetics is the combination of genetics and optics to control well-defined events within specific cells of living tissue. It includes the discovery and insertion into cells of genes that confer light responsiveness; it also includes the associated technologies for delivering light deep into organisms as complex as freely moving mammals, for targeting light-sensitivity to cells of interest, and for assessing specific readouts, or effects, of this optical control.

What excites neuroscientists about optogenetics is control over defined events within defined cell types at defined times – a level of precision that is most likely crucial to biological understanding even beyond neuroscience.

Deisseroth is the D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard, his PhD from Stanford, and his MD from Stanford. He also completed postdoctoral training, medical internship, and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, and he is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He continues as a practicing psychiatrist at Stanford with specialization in affective disorders and autism-spectrum disease, employing medications along with neural stimulation.

Over the last sixteen years, his laboratory created and developed optogenetics, hydrogel-tissue chemistry (beginning with CLARITY), and a broad range of enabling methods. He also has employed his technologies to discover the neural cell types and connections that cause adaptive and maladaptive behaviors, and has disseminated the technologies to thousands of laboratories around the world.

[Thanks to https://profiles.stanford.edu/karl-deisseroth]