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Methods ARTICLE

RuBi-Glutamate: two-photon and visible-light photoactivation of neurons and dendritic spines

Elodie Fino1, Roberto Araya1, Darcy S. Peterka1, Marcelo Salierno2, Roberto Etchenique2 and Rafael Yuste1*
1
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
2
Departamento de Química Inorgánica Analítica y Química Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
We describe neurobiological applications of RuBi-Glutamate, a novel caged-glutamate compound based on ruthenium photochemistry. RuBi-Glutamate can be excited with visible wavelengths and releases glutamate after one- or two-photon excitation. It has high quantum efficiency and can be used at low concentrations, partly avoiding the blockade of GABAergic transmission present with other caged compounds. Two-photon uncaging of RuBi-Glutamate has a high spatial resolution and generates excitatory responses in individual dendritic spines with physiological kinetics. With laser beam multiplexing, two-photon RuBi-Glutamate uncaging can also be used to depolarize and fire pyramidal neurons with single-cell resolution. RuBi-Glutamate therefore enables the photoactivation of neuronal dendrites and circuits with visible or two-photon light sources, achieving single cell, or even single spine, precision.
Keywords:
uncaging, Ruthenium, bipyridine, RuBi-GABA
Citation:
Fino E, Araya R, Peterka DS, Salierno M, Etchenique R and Yuste R (2009). RuBi-Glutamate: two-photon and visible-light photoactivation of neurons and dendritic spines. Front. Neural Circuits 3:2. doi: 10.3389/neuro.04.002.2009
Received:
13 March 2009;
 Paper pending published:
20 April 2009;
Accepted:
27 April 2009;
 Published online:
27 May 2009.

Edited by:

Timothy A. Ryan, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, USA

Reviewed by:

Edward M. Callaway, The Salk Institute, USA
Sam Wang, Princeton University, USA
Copyright:
© 2009 Fino, Araya, Peterka, Salierno, Etchenique and Yuste. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
*Correspondence:
Rafael Yuste, Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, 1212 Amsterdam Avenue, Box 2435, New York, NY 10027, USA. e-mail: rafaelyuste@columbia.edu

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