讲座：Biophotonic Techniques in Neuroscience
舒友生课题组邀请了University of Virginia School of Medicine的王广福博士来实验室访问，并做学术报告，欢迎感兴趣的老师和同学参加。讲座信息如下：讲座题目：Biophotonic Techniques in Neuroscience
主讲人：Guangfu Wang, Ph.D.
时 间：2月25日下午16:00
地 点：小红楼3楼大会议室
Abstract:
Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary science. Besides biology, chemistry and medicine, neuroscience study also relies heavily on physics, engineering and computer science. Traditional electrical approaches have been used in neuroscience since the very beginning, however, more and more optical approaches are emerging and being employed in this field. In terms of function, biophotonic techniques can be classified into three types-optical recording, stimulation and manipulation. In this talk, three topics, related to these three types of techniques, are presented. The first topic introduces how we used two-photon calcium imaging, combined with electrophysiological recording, to study CaV3.2 T-type calcium channels with human childhood absence epilepsy (CAE)-linked mutation C456S, hCaV3.2(C456S). We discovered functional CaV3.2 channels could induce local calcium influx to control NMDA transmission strength. Moreover, hCaV3.2(C456S) mutant channels have a higher channel open probability, induce more calcium influx, and enhance glutamatergic transmission. These results reveal an unexpected role of CaV3.2 in regulating NMDA-R-mediated transmission and a novel epileptogenic mechanism for human CAE. The second topic introduces our effort in optogenetic stimulation. Compared with one-photon stimulation, two-photon stimulation has higher spatial resolution but lower success rate. We found combination of one- and two-photon stimulation could improve spatial resolution without losing success rate. We expect this technique will play a role in searching neuronal connections. The third topic introduces optical tweezers. By computer generated hologram, one laser beam can generate multiple optical traps. This enables us to manipulate multiple particles simultaneously. Besides manipulation of small particles, another important application of optical tweezers is to measure interaction between biological molecules. Ras-BRaf-MEK-ERK pathway is known to play a role in regulating AMPA receptor trafficking in neurons. Using optical tweezers, we found Ras-BRaf interaction is strengthened by cadiofaciocutaneous (CFC) syndrome mutations at BRaf. This is consistent with our electrophysiological results, which showed AMPA transmission was enhanced by BRaf with CFC mutations.