Details of the sensor, called psychLight, appear in the journal
Compounds related to psychedelic drugs such as LSD and dimethyltryptamine (DMT) show great promise for treating disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance use disorder. These drugs are called psychoplastogens because of their ability to rapidly alter brain connections. But drugs that can cause hallucinations require very careful use and monitoring of patients.
Currently, the most effective way to test an experimental drug to see if it causes hallucinations is the “head twitch” assay in rodents. “Scientific studies on psychedelic drugs have been conducted since the 1940s but we still don’t have an effective cellular assay for them,” says coauthor David Olson, assistant professor in the chemistry department at the University of California, Davis.
Fluorescent Sensor Identifies Psychiatric Drugs | Research & Technology | Apr 2021 photonics.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from photonics.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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IMAGE: This is a representative image of cultured dissociated hippocampal neurons transiently expressing psychLight1 and psychLight2. Scale bar, 20 mm. view more
Credit: Calvin Ly
Psychedelic drugs have shown promise for treating neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder. However, due to their hallucinatory side effects, some researchers are trying to identify drugs that could offer the benefits of psychedelics without causing hallucinations. In the journal
Cell on April 28, researchers report they have identified one such drug through the development of a genetically encoded fluorescent sensor called psychLight that can screen for hallucinogenic potential by indicating when a compound activates the serotonin 2A receptor.
by Andy Fell
April 28, 2021
A genetically encoded fluorescent sensor to detect hallucinogenic compounds has been developed by researchers at the University of California, Davis. Named psychLight, the sensor could be used in discovering new treatments for mental illness, in neuroscience research and to detect drugs of abuse. The work is published April 28 in the journal Cell.
Compounds related to psychedelic drugs such as LSD and dimethyltryptamine (DMT) show great promise for treating disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder. These drugs are called psychoplastogens because of their ability to rapidly alter brain connections. But drugs that can cause hallucinations require very careful use and monitoring of patients.
Credit: Microwave Nano-Electronics Lab, UC Riverside.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. Materials having excess electrons are typically conductors. However, moiré patterns interference patterns that typically arise when one object with a repetitive pattern is placed over another with a similar pattern can suppress electrical conductivity, a study led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside, has found.
In the lab, the researchers overlaid a single monolayer of tungsten disulfide (WS
2) on a single monolayer of tungsten diselenide (WSe
2) and aligned the two layers against each other to generate large-scale moiré patterns. The atoms in both the WS
2 and WSe