Nobel Prize in Medicine to Deisseroth, Hegemann and Nagel for optogenetics

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet on October 5 awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel "for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics".

In the early 2000s Hegemann and Nagel discovered channelrhodopsin, a protein from the single-celled alga Chlamydomonas. When blue light hits it, a channel opens, ions flow into the cell and an electrical impulse is created. Any cell given the protein becomes light-sensitive.

From alga to brain

In 2005 Deisseroth inserted the channelrhodopsin gene into rat nerve cells and fired them with blue light, and two years later he made it work in the brains of living mice. The result was optogenetics, which researchers use to find the neural circuits behind memories, feelings and behaviours relevant to neurological and psychiatric disorders. In clinical medicine it is being tested as a way to restore sight.

Optogenetics maps the brain "in a way that we could once only dream of", said Per Svenningsson, chair of the Nobel Committee.