Shining light on orphan receptors
Thursday, October 15, 2015 - 12:01
in Biology & Nature
Light has been used for the first time to activate a receptor for which the compound binding and controlling it naturally is unknown, as reported in Nature Chemical Biology today. A team of scientists including Harald Janovjak, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), Álvaro Inglés-Prieto, first author and postdoc in the Janovjak group, and Eva Reichhart, PhD student in the Janovjak group, using libraries and cells from the Medical University of Vienna and the CeMM, Vienna, employed their novel application of optogenetics to identify a new compound that inhibits the orphan receptor ROS1, which has been linked to several forms of cancer.