Ofer Yizhar

In the past year and a half, we have been intensively protesting and fighting the Israeli government in an attempt to stop the war, secure the release of all hostages, and prevent the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Until now, our protests have primarily been focused internally.

What time is it? ⏰
Time to talk about the brain! 🧠

Opening the Neurotechnologies plenary session is @oyiz.bsky.social of Weizmann Inst. of Science. He is discussing new tools that allow highly light-sensitive silencing AND facilitate spectral multiplexing for modulation + imaging.

#PhotonicsWest

First post on Bluesky!✨
(1/7) Far-red dopamine sensor is coming! Excited to introduce our chemigenetic DA sensor, HaloDA1.0! #Dopamine #FarRedSensors, #GRAB www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Pictures of scientists at the symposium in honor of P.H.'s 70th birthday.

Optogenetics 7.0
🍾 Cheers 🥂
@johvierock.bsky.social
@oyiz.bsky.social
@deisseroth.bsky.social

Neuroscience methods - YouTube Nanocourse: Approaches to Study Neural Circuits This course was taught by Anita Autry, Tiago Gonçalves, and Luke Sjulson at Albert Einstein College of Medici...

Neuroscience students asked us to teach a PRACTICAL course on experimental methods, and it is now on YouTube!

Please like and repost to help us get the word out!

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Lecture 1: Signals and data acquisition
Focusing on hardware, digital/analog I/O, synchronization
🧵

Related to this, I created a starter pack for those interested/involved in Epilepsy research. Many of the DBS folks may also be interested.

go.bsky.app/B8pPi1n

Upon popular demand I created a started pack for people interested in Deep Brain Stimulation!
Lmk if you'd like to be added!

go.bsky.app/B9A9Cho

How to rebuild your network on @bsky.app and improve your experience here?

I made a short starter guide with resources.
www.neuronaldynamics.eu/resources/bl...

Also, a thread 🧵 below.

One difference is that the DIO approach leads to the permanent removal of DNA, making it irreversible. For SIO an equilibrium between forward and reverse recombinantion is created. However the reverse probability is low, creating a bias to the activated state. In practice expression levels are good.

The actual link in the text works. Not sure why the one below is broken - it’s auto-generated by the app 🤷🏻‍♂️

Important paper!

www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...

Im not sure the Discussion fully delineates its radical implications.

No more...

* Place cells
* Grid cells, splitter cells, border cells
* Mirror neurons
* Reward neurons
* Conflict cells

(continued)

Added to reading list! Congrats Pierre, Marie and the team!

A moment in time: Dieter Oesterhelt passed away in Münich on this day (November 28) in 2022. He identified the 1st microbial rhodopsin more than 50 years ago, with far-reaching impact that could hardly have been imagined.
laskerfoundation.org/in-memoriam-...

The size of the DIO cassette in our AAVs is 300bp, while the SIO is only 120bp. Functionally, we haven't seen any difference between them.

The lox66/71 idea is not new - it came from this paper: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... by Beat Lutz. It was just never used in AAV as far as we know. The idea is that after Cre recombination between these two sites, the resulting sites are no longer recognized by Cre and can't recombine again

So Mathias found a clever way to create an alternative Cre-dependent cassette. He used two mutated lox sites at inverse orientations, called lox66 and lox71, generating the "SIO":

The DIO cassette, which people typically use, includes two pairs of lox (Cre recognition) sites to prevent constant recombination, but it's quite large and it also contains a few cryptic stop codons which might reduce expression.

SIO is an acronym for "single-floxed inverted ORF (open reading frame" (which makes it a nested acronym!) - @mmahn.bsky.social made these vectors when he was trying to optimize Cre-based AAV expression.

Many people have asked me what's the deal with "SIO" in our Addgene vectors (www.addgene.org/Ofer_Yizhar/) - we use these in most of our Cre-dependent AAVs - so here's a brief explanation of how it works.

PdCO has now been distributed 100x via @addgene.bsky.social
🥳🥳🥳🙏🙏🙏

Picture of textbook cover with title "Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience"

Announcing a new open access textbook for entry level behavioral neuro. Funded by NSF. Written by a collection of 26 neuro experts. Method demonstration videos and author interviews too. Consider using it in your courses to reduce financial barriers to education.

openstax.org/details/book...

We’re seeking a postdoc/student excited about animal communication, brain-wide circuits, microscopy, singing fish (Danionella), wacky ideas and who likes to: get things done, experiment, analyze, ask, learn, help and cooperate. jlab.berlin

Hello bluesky please accept this offering of a picture from my recent run with @franklandlab.bsky.social