Team:NYMU-Taipei/concept-on-interface-and-biomedicine

From 2011.igem.org

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

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.