De novo chemo-optogenetics through the rational design of photoresponsive molecules and selection of their artificial protein binding pairs.

Abstract

Optical manipulation of proteins is central to probing and engineering cellular functions. However, existing optogenetic tools based on natural photoreceptors and chemo-optogenetic tools based on natural protein-ligand pairs are difficult to reconfigure for the desired photochemical and binding properties. Here we introduce a de novo approach for creating chemo-optogenetic tools. Instead of modifying pre-existing ligands, we first design a synthetic photoswitch with defined properties and then u