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Updated: May 29, 2026

Light-mediated Reversible Modulation of the Mitogen-activated Protein Kinase Pathway during Cell Differentiation and Xenopus Embryonic Development
Published on: June 15, 2017
Light-based feedback for controlling intracellular signaling dynamics
Jared E Toettcher1, Delquin Gong, Wendell A Lim
1Cardiovascular Research Institute and Department of Biochemistry, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA.
Abstract:
The ability to apply precise inputs to signaling species in live cells would be transformative for interrogating and understanding complex cell-signaling systems. Here we report an 'optogenetic' method for applying custom signaling inputs using feedback control of a light-gated protein-protein interaction. We applied this strategy to perturb protein localization and phosphoinositide 3-kinase activity, generating time-varying signals and clamping signals to buffer against cell-to-cell variability or changes in pathway activity.
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