The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
Hegemann and Nagel identified the light-sensitive channelrhodopsin protein in a single-celled alga, while Deisseroth turned it into a tool for controlling nerve-cell activity with light. Optogenetics has since become a key neuroscience method for mapping the neural circuits behind memory, emotion and behaviour.