Paper Title
Characterization of the Light-Activated Cyclase and its Optogenetic Applications in Bacterial System

Abstract
Optogenetics is a biological technique comprising of genetic and optical methods to regulate specific intracellular function on living tissue and animals. The technique so far has been employed widely to study neural circuits and now shifting towards other living systems. Optogenetics is based on activation and deactivation of various light regulated protein called photosensory receptors at different wavelength of light for respective photoreceptor. Our work aims at expression, purification and characterization of a photoactivated adenylyl cyclase from Beggiatoa sp.(bPAC), a BLUF domain containing cyclase protein that converts intracellular ATP to cyclic AMP (cAMP) when activated via specific blue light and analyze effect of increased intracellular cAMP level for bacterial physiology and delineate the role of cAMP mediated biological processes during host-pathogen interactions. In future, developed optogenetic tool could be applied to regulate cAMP mediated cellular events like osmoregulation, plaque and biofilm formation in bacteria and cell growth, cell division , cell differentiation, inflammation and apoptosis in mammalian cells. Thus, aiming to develop a potent tool to control or treat various diseases and disorders on exposure of blue light via bPAC. Keywords - Optogenetics, bPAC, cAMP