Gero Miesenböck, M.D.

Former Associate Professor of Cell Biology & Cellular & Molecular Physiology Searle Scholar
As of July 2007: Waynflete Professor of Physiology University of Oxford Sherrington Building Parks Road Oxford, OX1 3PT e-mail: gero.miesenboeck@dpag.ox.ac.uk		Department of Cell Biology Yale University School of Medicine 333 Cedar Street PO Box 208002 New Haven, CT 06520-8002 <Courier Address> 295 Congress Avenue BCMM 247/249 (Office: BCMM 254C) New Haven, CT 06519-1418

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Guided by the notion that biology itself offers some of the most incisive tools for studying biological systems, we rely on basic cellular mechanisms and genetic manipulations to record and remote-control the activity of nerve cells in the living brain. Our interests lie at the interface between cellular and systems neuroscience: we aim to understand how excitable cells are arranged into functional circuits, and how the operation of these circuits informs behavior.

To illuminate circuit mechanisms, we study explants of mouse brains in which specific classes of neurons have been programmed genetically to be light-addressable. This allows us to feed synthetic ‘test patterns’ into the circuitry and trace the transformations of these patterns in optical or electrophysiological recordings, with the intent of revealing the underlying information-processing architectures and computational principles.

To relate circuit states to behavior, we work with another genetically tractable model organism, the fruit fly. We observe or induce changes in the physiological states of genetically defined groups of neurons in the intact fly brain and correlate them with behavioral states to decipher the neural signals used to represent ‘content’.

Selected Publications

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Miesenböck  G, and Rothman JE. (1997)  Patterns of synaptic activity in neural networks recorded by light emission from synaptolucins. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94: 3402-3407.  

Miesenböck G, De Angelis DA, Rothman JE. (1998)  Visualizing secretion and synaptic transmission with pH-sensitive green fluorescent proteins. Nature 394: 192-195.  

Zemelman BV and Miesenböck G. (2001)  Genetic schemes and schemata in neurophysiology. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 11: 409-414.  

Zemelman BV, Lee GA, Ng M, Miesenböck G. (2002) Selective photostimulation of genetically chARGed neurons. Neuron 33: 15-22.

Ng, M, Roorda RD , Lima SQ, Zemelman BV, Morcillo P,Miesenböck G. (2002) Transmission of olfactory information between three populations of neurons in the antennal lobe of the fly. Neuron 36: 463-474.

Zemelman BV, Nesnas N, Lee GA, Miesenböck G. (2003) Photochemical gating of heterologous ion channels: Remote control over genetically designated populations of neurons. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100: 1352-1357.

Roorda RD, Hohl TM, Toledo-Crow R, Miesenböck G. (2004) Video-rate nonlinear microscopy of neuronal membrane dynamics with genetically encoded probes. J Neurophysiol. 92(1):609-21.

Miesenböck G. (2004) Genetic methods for illuminating the function of neural circuits. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 14(3): 395-402.

Lima SQ, Miesenböck G. (2005) Remote control of behavior through genetically targeted photostimulation of neurons. Cell. 121(1):141-52.

Miesenböck G, Kevrekidis IG. (2005) Optical Imaging and Control of Genetically Designated Neurons in Functioning Circuts. Annu Rev Neurosci. 28: 533-563.

Shang, Y., A. Claridge-Chang, L.J. Sjulson, M. Pypaert and G.  Miesenböck (2007) Excitatory local circuits and their implications  for olfactory processing in the fly antennal lobe. Cell 128: 601-612.

Sjulson, L. and G. Miesenböck (2007) Optical detection of action  potentials and other discrete physiological events: a perspective  from signal detection theory. Physiology 22: 47-55.