Chemical and Biological Switches

复杂的生命系统，如发育中的多细胞生物，仍然是我们对自然世界分子理解的一个几乎没有绘制的前沿。人们不能仅仅通过研究这些系统的孤立组成部分来实现对它们的分子理解;为了捕捉它们的本质，人们必须设计出完整地研究它们的方法。操纵分子结构和功能的光学方法提供了解开生命系统某些复杂性的可能性。它们可以用于在活体动物体内以非常精确的时间在特定位点靶向单个分子物种。这种方法的能力已经得到了广泛的认可（Nature Methods 2010中的“年度方法”），但是要使体内分子的光学控制普遍实用，还有很长的路要走。

Complex living systems, such as a developing multicellular organism, remain a barely charted frontier in our molecular understanding of the natural world. One cannot achieve a molecular understanding of such systems solely by studying their isolated components; to capture their essence one must devise methods to study them intact. Optical methods for manipulating molecular structure and function offer the potential to unravel some of the complexity of living systems. They can be used to target individual molecular species at specific sites with very precise timing inside living animals. The power of this approach has been recognized widely ("Method of the Year" in Nature Methods 2010) but there is still a long way to go to make optical control of molecules in vivo generally practical.