Topic Introduction

Nitrophenyl-Based Caged Neurotransmitters

Adapted from Imaging: A Laboratory Manual (ed. Yuste). CSHL Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA, 2011.

Abstract

Nitroaromatic photochemical protecting groups were developed for organic synthesis in 1966. Since the early 1990s, this type of chromophore has been used by neuroscientists to liberate a wide variety of amino acid neurotransmitters such as ACh, glutamate, GABA, and glycine, among others. Since 2001, several laboratories have used two-photon excitation of nitroaromatic cages for highly localized uncaging of glutamate in acute brain slices.

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