Ed Boyden’s group has published High-performance genetically targetable optical neural silencing by light-driven proton pumps, detailing a set of new optical neuronal off-switches borrowed from various species that appear to be much better than Halorhodopsin for silencing neurons. Halo works well for preventing action potentials when the nucleus is illuminated, but has a harder time blocking transmission of action potentials down an axon after it has been initiated. Also, previously engineered Halo variants, including eNpHR, suffer from light-dependent inactivation and have an expression sweet spot that could use broadening. I’m looking forward to finding out if Arch, and the other new switches from Boyden’s group allow more powerful experiments in our hands.
Brain Windows 
i’m surprised this made it to nature.
The rule is “Nature (or Science) will not publish methods*”
* unless it is channelrhopdopsin-ish and thus will bump up the impact index.
[…] light intensities. The paper implies superior performance over the Boyden group’s Arch optogenetic silencer technology, but shows no head to head data. As always, testing both in your own system is the […]