The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded on Monday, the 5th, to three scientists for research on the mechanisms the brain uses to turn on or off the activity of individual neurons. Karl Deisseroth, 54, Peter Hegemann, 71, and Georg Nagel, 73, were honored for work on light-activated ion channels and on optogenetics.
The Nobel Assembly noted that the method developed by the trio is now used in laboratories around the world to help unravel the mysteries of the brain.
Deisseroth is a researcher at Stanford University in California; Hegemann works at Humboldt University in Berlin; and Nagel at the University of Würzburg, also in Germany, according to the organization.
Optogenetics inaugurated what the Nobel Assembly called a new era in neuroscience: the discovery of a kind of light-controlled switch capable of activating and deactivating nerve cells and brain circuits to better understand how the brain works and to begin mapping the pathways associated with behaviors and diseases.
The work began when Hegemann investigated how a unicellular green alga swims toward light. He and Nagel identified a protein that, when illuminated by blue light, opens a channel and generates an electrical impulse. By inserting this protein into other cells, they begin to respond to light.
Deisseroth, then, used the gene that controls this protein to create a light-activated switch capable of controlling neurons in the brains of living mice.
“It is a very precise set of tools for conducting experiments on how the brain works, something that is quite difficult to achieve in other ways,” said Jeremy Berg of the University of Pittsburgh. He was at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the early 2000s, when the institution awarded Deisseroth substantial funding for “this optogenetics vision that ended up proving quite faithful.”
Medicine Prize Opens Nobel Week
The announcement was made at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, opening Nobel Week. This year’s prize is 12 million Swedish kronor (about US$1.2 million).
Following this, the prizes in Physics (Tuesday), Chemistry (Wednesday) and Literature (Thursday) will be announced. After the Peace Prize, on Friday, the Nobel in Economics will be announced on October 12. Source: Associated Press.
