{"id":868,"date":"2011-07-07T14:22:40","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T02:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/?p=868"},"modified":"2011-07-07T14:22:40","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T02:22:40","slug":"optogenetics-the-stuff-of-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/optogenetics-the-stuff-of-science-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"`Optogenetics’: The Stuff of Science Fiction?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When\u00a0 I was\u00a0 a wee lad back in Scotland\u00a0 one of my favourite films\u00a0 was\u00a0 a movie called\u00a0 `Fantastic Voyage’.
\nBased\u00a0on an\u00a0Issac Asimov novel it’s about a group of scientists\u00a0who, along with\u00a0their hi-tech sub\u00a0are\u00a0 miniaturised\u00a0 and injected into the body of an emminent scientist. Their\u00a0 mission:- \u00a0to\u00a0 perform some very\u00a0targeted brain surgery from within using lasers.
\n(The film is often most remembered by film reviewers for a\u00a0 scene where our hero has to rip ‘giant’ (to them) `phagocytosing’ white blood cells from a wetsuit-clad Raquel Welsh. \u00a0At the time I was way too young to understand why `that scene’ was so appealing to grown-ups!\u00a0\u00a0 Especially when there were so many other cool scenes of them travelling\u00a0 through the blood stream, lungs, inner ear and finally in the brain surrounded by\u00a0 hanging\u00a0 neurones!).
\nAnyway, when I read this article on\u00a0`Optogenetics’ -a new technology that\u00a0 potentially allows scientists to switch\u00a0 individual neurones on and off by means of light –\u00a0 the\u00a0movie leapt into my mind and I\u00a0 became intrigued to read on.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It’s\u00a0 a \u00a0facinatating concept\u00a0 and another example\u00a0of 21st century\u00a0ingenuity from \u00a0 the rapidly expanding world of nanotechnology.<\/p>\n

Check it out here:-<\/p>\n

http:\/\/the-scientist.com\/2011\/07\/01\/optogenetics-a-light-switch-for-neurons\/<\/a><\/p>\n

or read full article here<\/p>\n

http:\/\/the-scientist.com\/2011\/07\/01\/the-birth-of-optogenetics\/<\/a><\/p>\n

P.S. For all the film buffs out there, a remake of ‘Fantastic Voyage’ in rumoured to be one of James Cameron’s latest projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When\u00a0 I was\u00a0 a wee lad back in Scotland\u00a0 one of my favourite films\u00a0 was\u00a0 a movie called\u00a0 `Fantastic Voyage’. Based\u00a0on an\u00a0Issac Asimov novel it’s about a group of scientists\u00a0who, along with\u00a0their hi-tech sub\u00a0are\u00a0 miniaturised\u00a0 and injected into the body … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5718,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[481,501,15,485],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology-resources","category-electricity-magnetism","category-general","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5718"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}