Enabling Blue-Light-Inducible Penile Erection in Switzerland

One of the first — perhaps the very first — papers about enabling blue-light-inducible penile erection in Switzerland has just been published.

The paper is:

“A Synthetic Erectile Optogenetic Stimulator Enabling Blue-Light-Inducible Penile Erection,” Taeuk Kim, Marc Folcher, Marie Doaud-El Baba and Prof. Martin Fussenegger [pictured here], Angewandte Chemie, epub Mqrch 18, 2015. (Thanks to Ig Nobel Prize winner Len Fisher for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, Institut Universitaire de Technologie, IUTA, France, and the University of Basel, Switzerland, report:

“We thank Thomas Horn for generous advice with sperm microscopy…. An erectile optogenetic stimulator (EROS), a synthetic designer guanylate cyclase producing a blue-light-inducible surge of the second messenger cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) in mammalian cells, enabled blue-light-dependent penile erection associated with occasional ejaculation after illumination of EROS-transfected corpus cavernosum in male rats. Photostimulated short-circuiting of complex psychological, neural, vascular, and endocrine factors to stimulate penile erection in the absence of sexual arousal may foster novel advances….”