The last two decades have witnessed the emergence of optogenetics; a field that has given researchers the ability to use light to control biological processes at high spatiotemporal and quantitative resolutions, in a reversible manner with minimal side‐effects. Optogenetics has revolutionized the neurosciences, increased our understanding of cellular signalling and metabolic networks and resulted in variety of applications in biotechnology and biomedicine. However, implementing optogenetics in plants has been less straightforward, given their dependency on light for their life cycle. Here, we highlight some of the widely used technologies in microorganisms and animal systems derived from plant photoreceptor proteins and discuss strategies recently implemented to overcome the challenges for using optogenetics in plants.

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植物的光遗传学

最近的二十年见证了光遗传学的兴起。这一领域使研究人员能够以高时空和定量分辨率使用光以可逆的方式控制生物过程，且副作用最小。光遗传学已经彻底改变了神经科学，增加了我们对细胞信号传导和代谢网络的理解，并导致了在生物技术和生物医学中的多种应用。但是，考虑到植物在生命周期中对光的依赖性，在植物中实施光遗传学的过程并不那么直接。在这里，我们重点介绍了一些源自植物感光蛋白的微生物和动物系统中广泛使用的技术，并讨论了为克服在植物中使用光遗传学的挑战而最近实施的策略。