Nobel Prize in Medicine for Peter Hegemann, Georg Nagel and Karl Deisseroth

This year's Nobel Prize for Medicine goes to the two Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel as well as the US researcher Karl Deisseroth. The Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced that their discoveries in the field of optogenetics will be honored. With the method they developed, nerve cells in the brain can be specifically activated or deactivated using light.

Peter Hegemann from the Humboldt University of Berlin and Georg Nagel from the University of Würzburg laid the foundation stone with the discovery of the protein channelrhodopsin in a single-celled algae. Karl Deisseroth from Stanford University then took advantage of this property and developed a light-controlled switch for nerve cells.