Electron-donating nucleophilic compounds activate TRPA1 ion channels in fruit flies and mosquitoes, but not humans, making TRPA1 a promising target for insect repellants.

The 'missing' class of Caenorhabditis elegans excitatory motor neurons, AS, contribute to propagation and coordination of body waves, integrating information from, and feeding back to premotor interneurons byelectrical signaling.

Research into light-gated ion channels called channelrhodospins laid the foundations for the development of optogenetics, a technique that has gone on to revolutionize neuroscience.

The atomic structure of GtACR1 provides new insight into the chemical mechanism of natural light-gated anion membrane conductance, and enables its optimization for optogenetic photoinhibition of neuron firing.

Generation of stable transgenic opsin lines together with in vivo calibration of their efficacy using behavioural and electrophysiological assays constitutes a novel optogenetic toolkit in zebrafish.

Substrate-induced structural changes in GtACR1 provide new insight into the chemical mechanism of natural light-gated anion conductance and facilitate its optimization for photoinhibition of neuron firing in optogenetics.

Focal optogenetic inactivation of cortex induces complex changes in neural responses outside the targeted area that can influence behavioral performance.

Asp234 is deprotonated in the ground state and forms the proton transfer pathway that proceeds from the Schiff base toward Glu68 in the intermediate state of the anion channelrhodopsin GtACR1.

A viral heliorhodopsin from Emiliania huxleyi virus 202 (V2HeR3) is a light-activated proton transporter, which has the potential to depolarize the host cells by light, possibly to overcome the host defense mechanisms or to prevent superinfection.