Human cell becomes living laser with jellyfish protein.

nature.com

45 points·whiskers··8 comments

Science Fiction: The article mentions cells that can "self lase" may eventually be developed. If they are, I wonder how well they'd work for neural interface. On the brain side, these cells could be used for output, with photo-diodes accepting computer input. For data transmission in the reverse direction, electronic lasers could be used to agonize photo-receptors in the brain.

Optogenetics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SLdSbp6VjM

very, very interesting. Thanks for the link - in case anyone else is wondering, this (a google tech talk) is totally worth the time.

Hah, I just went to a talk by Karl Deisseroth last week. http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlab/

Don't hold your breath waiting for that. The GFP inside the cell is the gain medium, but all the energy is coming from another laser outside the cell. So, while a self-lasing organic structure is marginally more plausible today than yesterday, the hard part of that problem still remains, and it is much harder, and this paper doesn't even attempt to solve that problem.

If a chemist figures out how to generate enough power inside a cell to get a population inversion in a laser's worth of an organic fluorescent protein, it will make this result seem positively boring by comparison, and "powering a cell laser" will be the least of the applications.

Reminds me a little of a Mycon podship:

http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Podship

This immediately makes me think of David Brin's _Sundiver_.

Or X-men's Cyclops.

Man, I want some of these in my fingertips. Cut me off in traffic? Point my finger and POW!

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