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From 2011.igem.org

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REALIZING THE CONCEPT OF AVATAR

Magnetotactic bacteria has long been regarded as an interesting group of species exhibiting magnetotaxis with their fascinating bacterial organelles, magnetosomes. Also, optogenetics, the recent revolution in neuroscientific methodologies, has caught our attentions intensively. An eagerness out of pure curiosity to combine and utilize these two stream of thoughts unexpectedly gave way to a truly revolutionary idea, the realization of the concept of Avatar.

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OPTO-MAGNETIC REVOLUTION

This year, NYMU-Taipei goes beyond the current realm of mainstream synthetic biology, developing a opto-magnetic probing platform on Magnetospirillum magneticum AMB-1 which functionally couples with channelrhodopsins (opsins that are ultra-rapidly reactive to light beams of certain wavelengths) to enable activation of neuronal circuitry in a totally wireless, spatially and temporarily accurate, minimally invasive, 3-dimensional multi-site stimulation enabling fasion.

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