This past summer, I worked in Dr. Mark Gomelsky's Lab at the University of Wyoming on engineering near infrared window light (NIRW) activated guanylate cyclase. Cell-based therapies have showed great potential to treat various diseases but unfortunately lack an effective means of control after implantation. If NIRW light was used as a control tool, it would provide non-invasive, spatiotemporal control. Guanylate cyclase (GC) is a protein that produces cyclic guanosine monophosphate or cGMP, which helps in controlling hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels. These channels regulate pacemaker and neuronal cells. The goal of the study was to produce a NIRW light-activated GC as it would enable specific control of physiological functions related to cGMP. We also worked with the adenylate cyclase (AC) and GC called PaaC7 and PagC7 respectively, which are weaker cyclases with high dynamic ranges. We designed some potentially NIRW light activated GC constructs, IlaM5 ER23 and IlaM5 EK37, F0-F7, and NNK 67 and NNK 85. Initial results showed that F0, F2, F3, NNK 67, and NNK 85 had potential to be light activated. Because of the heterogenous results, we continued the study with objectives: 1) Verifying the photoactivity of F0, F2, F3, NNK 67, and NNK 85 and 2) Controlling HCN channel activity through membrane localization of weaker NIRW light activated GC. The past GC constructs were verified through transformation into A388 and A390 strains and Blue/White LacZ assay was performed. IlaM5 BphO's photoactivity was also verified through the same procedures but in the BIK strain. To design the membrane localized GC construct, the pAAV IlaM5 plasmid was used as a backbone. It was cut with EcoRI and NruI and BphP was PCR amplified. The PaaC7, BphP, and backbone were cloned together through Gibson Cloning. We found that the past GC constructs produced minimal cGMP and were not light-activated. Additionally, IlaM5 BphO was light-dependent but not as efficiently in the A388 strain as in the BIK strain. The pAAV-PaaC7 construct was successfully Gibson cloned. Based on these results, we plan to continue the study to produce the pAAV-PagC7 construct and to test HCN channel light-dependent activity.