Title: Nanotechnology-Enabled Neural Stimulation
Date/Time: Tuesday, 25 May, 2021 / 5:00 p.m
Speaker: 이재현
Abstract:
Nanotechnology has been served as a platform technology in various field of researches, especially enabling interfacial sciences between nanoscale materials and biological systems. This talk introduces a new nanotool as an enabling technology, designed for neuromodulation for in vivo animal studies. The tool is named as magnetic torque generator (m-Torquer), based magnetic nanomaterials that mimics the magnetoreception in nature. Use of the m-Torquer enables generation of mechanical torque force remotely at a long distance ever demonstrated in a lab scale. The magnetomechanical force works as physical stimuli to activate mechanotransduction systems in biology. As an example, a mechanosensitive ion channel, Piezo1, was genetically encoded to the target cells, especially neurons, which was later activated mechanically by the m-Torquer for the effective neuromodulation. This magnetogenetic approach is comparable to optogenetics in terms of using physical stimuli to control neuronal behaviors with additional benefits of wireless and remote controllability, enabling easy translation to animal studies. The utilization of m-Torquer is not limited to neuromodulation but extended to versatile biosystems to control cell signaling pathways in genetic and protein levels to change the functions of cells.