A key to assembling materials on the surface of live neurons

When Anqi Zhang arrived at Stanford University as a postdoc, she had just spent six years learning to design and build brain implants: miniscule devices that could record the activity of neurons while causing minimal tissue damage. She became used to constructing devices herself, using metal films and precise beams of light. To begin this new phase of her career, however, Zhang decided to learn something completely new: genetic engineering. Instead of manufacturing devices herself, she would have to figure out how to leverage cellular machinery to do the assembling for her.

“It was very intimidating at first,” Zhang says. “I felt like I had to prove myself again, in this brand new field.”

For her postdoc, Zhang joined the Stanford University labs of Zhenan Bao, Professor of Chemical Engineering at, and Karl Deisseroth, Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. As part of a team of researchers, Zhang has designed a protein complex that partially lodges in the cell membranes of specific types of neurons, where it can spark substances injected into the brain to assemble cohesive materials. If those substances are conductive, they can change neurons’ sensitivity to stimuli, create electrical connections between neurons that previously functioned independently, or facilitate brain recording and stimulation. The team’s work was published in Science Advances this August.

Read the full article