Nobel Prize in Medicine: The Light Switch for Brain Cells
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2026 has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for their development of optogenetics, a groundbreaking method that allows scientists to control nerve cells with light.
The discovery began with a single-celled green alga, Chlamydomonas, which swims towards light. Peter Hegemann, a professor at Humboldt University of Berlin, and Georg Nagel, from the University of Würzburg, found a protein on the alga's surface called channelrhodopsin, which opens when blue light hits it, triggering an electrical signal.
Through their research, they discovered that this protein could be introduced into any cell, making it sensitive to light. Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and researcher at Stanford University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, took this further by introducing the gene for this protein into rat nerve cells, enabling them to fire in response to blue light.
This technique, known as optogenetics, offers unprecedented opportunities for mapping brain activity and understanding the neural circuits behind memories, feelings, and behaviors. The Nobel Committee's Per Svenningsson emphasized the method's potential to "map the brain in a way that we could once only dream of."
While optogenetics is primarily a research tool, it has already shown promise in medicine, particularly in restoring sight to individuals with retinitis pigmentosa. Clinical trials are also underway to explore its potential in various other applications, including brain-computer interfaces.
The three laureates will share the prize money of 12 million Swedish kronor equally.