Excitatory opsin, ChRERα, enables longitudinal tracing of expression with PET imaging

In the July issue of Science Translational Medicine, Bonaventura and colleagues introduce ChRERα, which acts as an excitatory opsin and allows binding of the PET tracer [18F]16α-fluoroestradiol (FES). The authors demonstrate that ChRERα acts as an excitatory opsin in vivo in rats and can be traced in vivo using PET imaging in rats and nonhuman primates, highlighting that ChRERα may be a potentially useful optogenetic tool for non-human primate research.

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