Optogenetic Approaches to Explore Intracellular Dynamics

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editors

Torsten Wittmann

University of California San Francisco, Department of Cell and Tissue Biology

Torsten Wittmann is a professor in the Department of Cell and Tissue Biology at the University of California, San Francisco. Research in the Wittmann lab focuses on how the microtubule cytoskeleton organizes intracellular structure and controls complex cell dynamics such as migration, polarity, and division, which are critical to normal and pathological cell biology. Prof. Wittmann received his PhD from the University of Heidelberg/ European Molecular Biology Laboratory in 1999 and since then has worked on many aspects of intracellular dynamics utilizing advanced live-cell microscopy and optogenetics approaches.

Jeffrey van Haren

Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, Department of Cell Biology

Jeffrey van Haren is a junior group leader in the Department of Cell Biology at the Erasmus Medical Center. Jeffrey received his PhD in cell biology from the Erasmus Medical Center, where he studied microtubule-associated proteins that control neuronal outgrowth. He did his postdoctoral training in the Wittmann lab at UCSF, where he helped to develop novel optogenetics tools to spatially control the activity of cytoskeletal regulators at the subcellular level. Currently, his research at the Erasmus Medical Center focuses on dissecting how neuronal guidance factors control cytoskeletal dynamics within growth cones, utilizing live-cell imaging and novel optogenetics tools.

Collection Overview

The interior of living cells is remarkably complex and dynamic, ranging from signaling processes and macromolecular assembly to organelle biogenesis and movements. In the last decade, many experimental systems have been invented that utilize different types of photosensitive protein modules, to manipulate and investigate intracellular dynamics. In combination with modern microscopy, these optogenetic experimental approaches have the potential to deepen our understanding of how cells achieve spatially and temporally controlled biochemistry and mechanics.

While the term ‘optogenetics’ originated from experiments using light-gated ion channels in neurons, for this Methods Collection we define optogenetics more generally as any genetically encoded protein system made in a way to achieve a specific light-mediated function in live cells. However, intracellular optogenetics is still an emerging field and relies on custom-designed hardware, photostimulation, and analysis methods that are frequently specific to certain research groups, and difficult to fully describe in written form. This Methods Collection aims to bring together diverse optogenetic approaches from different labs with a focus on technological and quantitative aspects ranging from the design of specific optogenetic switches to application and analysis inside living cells, tissues, and organisms.