Curated Optogenetic Publication Database

Abstract: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is the key regulator in neovascular lesions. The anti-VEGF injection is a major way to relieve retinal neovascularization and treat these diseases. However, current anti-VEGF therapeutics show significant drawbacks. The reason is the inability to effectively control its therapeutic effect. Therefore, how to controllably inhibit the VEGF target is a key point for preventing angiogenesis. Here, a CRISPR-dCas9 optogenetic nanosystem was designed for the precise regulation of pathologic neovascularization. This system is composed of a light-controlled regulatory component and transcription inhibition component. They work together to controllably and effectively inhibit the target gene's VEGF. The opto-CRISPR nanosystem achieved precise regulation according to individual differences, whereby the expression and interaction of gene was activated by light. The following representative model laser-induced choroid neovascularization and oxygen-induced retinopathy were taken as examples to verify the effect of this nanosystem. The results showed that the opto-CRISPR nanosystem was more efficacious in the light control group (NV area effectively reduced by 41.54%) than in the dark control group without light treatment. This strategy for the CRISPR-optogenetic gene nanosystem led to the development of approaches for treating severe eye diseases. Besides, any target gene of interest can be designed by merely replacing the guide RNA sequences in this system, which provided a method for light-controlled gene transcriptional repression.

Abstract: Protein degradation technology, which is one of the most direct and effective ways to regulate the life activities of cells, is expected to be applied to the treatment of various diseases. However, current protein degradation technologies such as some small-molecule degraders which are unable to achieve spatiotemporal regulation, making them difficult to transform into clinical applications. In this article, an upconversion optogenetic nanosystem was designed to attain accurate regulation of protein degradation. This system worked via two interconnected parts: 1) the host cell expressed light-sensitive protein that could trigger the ubiquitinproteasome pathway upon blue-light exposure; 2) the light regulated light-sensitive protein by changing light conditions to achieve regulation of protein degradation. Experimental results based on model protein (Green Fluorescent Protein, GFP) validated that this system could fulfill protein degradation both in vitro (both Hela and 293T cells) and in vivo (by upconversion optogenetic nanosystem), and further demonstrated that we could reach spatiotemporal regulation by changing the illumination time (0–25 h) and the illumination frequency (the illuminating frequency of 0–30 s every 1 min). We further took another functional protein (The Nonstructural Protein 9, NSP9) into experiment. Results confirmed that the proliferation of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) was inhibited by degrading the NSP9 in this light-induced system, and PRRSV proliferation was affected by different light conditions (illumination time varies from 0–24 h). We expected this system could provide new perspectives into spatiotemporal regulation of protein degradation and help realize the clinical application transformation for treating diseases of protein degradation technology.