Overview
- The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel on Monday, October 5, 2026, with the three sharing 12 million Swedish kronor.
- Hegemann and Nagel identified channelrhodopsins in green algae, proteins that open ion channels when lit and make cells directly light-sensitive.
- Deisseroth adapted those microbial genes for neurons and in the mid-2000s demonstrated millisecond-scale, cell-type-specific control of brain cells in living animals, a technique named optogenetics.
- Optogenetics has become a core research tool for mapping and testing causal roles of neural circuits in behaviors and disease, changing how scientists study memory, sleep, mood and movement disorders.
- Clinical translation is at an early stage with trials that deliver light-sensitive proteins to the retina plus special light-emitting glasses reporting partial vision restoration, and researchers say more trials and improvements are likely before therapies become routine.