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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WAND) — This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to optogenetics researchers. It is a new field of study, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is one of the few schools nationwide researching it.
“Optogenetics is a light switch for a cell,” said Kai Zhang, a professor in the U of I’s biochemistry department. “You can turn on the cell, turn it on, or turn it off almost instantly.”
Zhang shared a video of optogenetics in action. The clip shows a cell area the width of a human hair. Optogenetics allows a beam of light to target the area so precisely that cancer cells are killed in only half of the space. No cells are damaged in the other half.
“This technology literally transformed neuroscience research,” Zhang said. “Traditional brain stimulation methods work like a floodlight. It’s stimulating everything in the region at once. But optogenetics is like a laser pointer. You can target the specific cell you want and then leave the rest of the brain untouched.”
The tool’s precision makes a huge difference in real-life situations. For example, if the light is used to kill cancer cells in a breast cancer patient, there’s a smaller risk of damaging the lungs.
Zhang has been involved in optogenetics research at the U of I since 2014. He said the school provides the right environment for this research.
“Our research is actually at the intersection between biochemistry, biophysics, cell biology, even bioengineering. We have different communities within campus that we can talk to each other, we can collaborate,” Zhang said.
Fewer than 100 labs have this research capacity. Students from high school to graduate programs participate in the optogenetics research at the U of I.
Dr. Kai Zhang’s research work was supported by the Biochemistry Department and School of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Grant, ReproEngineering Training Grant, and Cancer Center at Illinois (award No. 9572) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM132438) and the National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH124827), the National Science Foundation (award No. 2121003), and an NSF Science and Technology Center for Quantitative Cell Biology grant (award No. 2243257), and Research Corporation for Science Advancement.