The regulation of cellular signaling in vivo has been a challenging task owing to the lack of effective methods for tunable control of the amplitude, location, and duration of cell-signaling events at a deep-tissue level. In this issue of ACS Nano, an intriguing paper by Ambrosone et aL demonstrates that deep-tissue-penetrating near-infrared (NIR) light can be used to control the Wnt/fl-cateninsignaling pathway in a single-cell organism (Hydra) by utilizing microcapsules that contain plasmonic gold nano particles. In parallel, in recent work, we proposed up conversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) as NIR-light-activatable "wireless" optogenetic tools, and we showed their ability to modulate cell signaling pathways in both mammalian cells and mice. We believe that these interesting MR-light-responsive nanotechnologies will open new avenues for both basic research and clinical applications.
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