This paper reports the engineering of a ligand-gated ion channel for specificity toward a synthetic neurotransmitter analogue. This allowed the effects of activating and deactivating the channel to be studied in genetically engineered mice.
Rather than finding a blood-brain barrier permeable small molecule that was selective toward this LGIC, they engineered the protein to be activated by orthogonal small molecules which they knew could cross the blood-brain barrier.
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ReplyDeleteThat...makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI think this is really cool. I hope they are able to use this technology to find out something really interesting about how mice, and eventually humans, think.
ReplyDelete