Applying Non-neuromodulatory Optogenetics and Photopharmacology in Model Organisms

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editor

Martin Distel

St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute

Martin Distel is group leader of the Innovative Cancer Models research group at St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute, Vienna, Austria. He is also head of the recently established Zebrafish platform Austria for preclinical drug screening (ZANDR) (www.zandr-ccri.at). He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Molecular Biotechnology from the Technical University Munich, Germany. During his PhD, he developed genetic tools and protocols to follow hindbrain development in the living zebrafish embryo in the laboratory of Prof. Reinhard Köster at the Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany. For his postdoctoral studies, he joined the laboratory of Prof. David Traver at the University of California, San Diego, USA. His current research interests are cancer modeling in zebrafish, applying optogenetic and photopharmaceutical tools for cancer research in zebrafish and drug screening in zebrafish disease models.

Collection Overview

Photopharmacology and optogenetics, initially applied in neuroscience to control ion channels, now offer unprecedented light-mediated spatial and temporal control over a wide range of proteins and their functions. Exciting novel non-neuromodulatory optogenetic tools and photopharmaceuticals were recently developed to control many biological processes, including transcription, translation, signaling pathway activity, enzyme function, cargo transport, cell migration or cytoskeleton dynamics.

Unfortunately, the translation from proof-of-concept studies in vitro to applications in entire model organisms like Drosophila, C. elegans, zebrafish or mouse is not always straightforward. Within this collection, we aim to provide detailed protocols, including illumination instructions for the application of such novel non-neural optogenetic tools and photopharmaceuticals in model organisms.