Controlling a protein's activity with light enables spatial and temporal regulation that would be practically impossible otherwise. Such fine control is desirable for teasing out the molecular details of cellular processes and for initiating the actions of therapeutic proteins in precise locations in the body. Molecular biologists, including Michael Lin of Stanford University, are hard at work developing and improving such protein technology. And Lin's latest approach is "particularly remarkable," says Harald Janovjak of the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria.
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