Sneak preview of “Dissecting the brain, one gene at a time”

Last week, we spoke with core member Feng Zhang to get a sneak preview of his upcoming Midsummer Nights’ Science lecture, which he will give on July 18. His talk, titled “Dissecting the brain, one gene at a time” will introduce you to new technologies he and his colleagues are developing for genome engineering, and for manipulating the activities of different cell types, including neurons. Listen to Feng describe two such tools – TAL effectors (more about those here) and optogenetics – and how nature helped inspire their creation in the video below.

Registration for the 2012 Midsummer Nights’ Science series is now full, but follow along on twitter @broadinstitute on Wednesday night – we will be live tweeting, using the hashtag #broadtalks. We’ll also be posting all of the videos from the series on the Broad Institute’s YouTube channel (where you can already check out Paul Blainey’s talk from last week).

Update July 25, 2012: Feng Zhang's full lecture is now available! You can find it on our site and on the Broad Institute's YouTube channel.

Video courtesy of Lars-Erik Sirén, Nick Dua, & Harrison Dreves