Optogenetics allows you to control neurons with light.

From my understanding, this discovery is on the level of what transistors were for electronics - unlocking a completely new way to understand and design the electronic circuits, which later on enabled the rise of computing.

Since compared to biology our computing is still highly primitive, it seems like next step in compute power will be biological and quantum computing.

Also, just like with CRISPR, there were others thinking along the same lines at the same time, but who didn't get the high profile publications: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/he-may-have-inven...

I participated in early work in optogenetics in larger brains, and Karl was my postdoc adviser. He is a deeply thoughtful and generous scientist. His book Projections unpacks some of his thinking as to how these tools may unravel and treat a panel of psychiatric conditions. The company MapLight he started is working to make these treatments a reality via ongoing clinical trials https://maplightrx.com/pipeline/

(To be clear, since it's probably necessary, I'm asking a curiosity-driven question about the mechanism here, not throwing shade on the work. Given it's won the researchers a Nobel prize it's obviously highly significant.)

The lectures themselves were, unfortunately, quite boring. This was the introductory course for freshmen, covering a lot of material that students ought to have learnt in school already. Much of the time, the professor appeared to be as bored by it as many of the students were, but I guess it had to be done and someone had to do it...

Looking at the basic science results I could not decide if they were bringing in really novel understanding or basically repeating a lot of the old electrical stimulation results.

I do remember a staggering amount of money was pumped into the field and it was super trendy in the 2010s.

Crick’ original challenge: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/controlling-the-b...

He said later: One of the next require- ments(asdiscussedabove)istobeabletoturnthe¢ring of one or more types of neuron on and o¡ inthe alert animal in a rapid manner. The ideal signal would be light, probably at an infrared wavelength to allow the light to penetrate far enough. This seems rather far- fetched but it is conceivable that molecular biologists could engineer a particular cell type to be sensitive to light in this way.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1692710/

It’s rather neat that we can go from wish to mechanism at least sometimes, in this fashion. Lots of hard work and ingenuity in between, and worth celebrating.

There’s a big contrast there to how some scientists operate - hoarding ideas, being cautious in collaboration, demanding credit. I’m so pleased for him!

Many people involved in optogenetics, it must have been hard to select 3.