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Steve Dixon Featured in Nature Magazine

June 14, 2007

Steve Dixon, Applied Art’s senior digital designer, has collaborated with two west coast scientists, Feng Zhang and Karl Deisseroth, to visualize for Nature magazine their work with using laser beams to engineer mammalian and nematode neurons in the brain. The secret is engineering them to produce light-activated proteins that pump chloride ions outside of the cells, briefly desensitizing them. Using a previously developed laser “on” switch, the researchers caused nematode muscles to contract and relax by switching between blue and yellow laser light, as reported in Nature.