Development of a Photoactivatable CaMKII for the Optical Manipulation in Single-synapses—Local Optogenetics—

The optogenetic method allows us to manipulate cellular activity with high spatiotemporal resolution. most widely used tool is channelrhodopsin-2 that can be utilized control neuronal at the level. However, tools capable of inducing synaptic plasticity level single synapses (spines) have been lacking. We recently developed a photoactivatable CaMKII by fusing light-sensitive domain, LOV2, CaMKIIα. Combining two-photon excitation, we successfully activated in spines and induced long-term potentiation (LTP) hippocampal neurons. manipulation LTP (we call it “local optogenetics”) will find many applications neuroscience other fields.