Nobel Prize for HU neuroscientist Peter Hegemann

Prof. Dr Peter Hegemann is being honoured for his research in the field of optogenetics. Together with the other two Nobel laureates, he has laid the foundations for a new era in the neurosciences.

 

Prof. Dr Peter Hegemann of the Department of Biology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) is to receive, together with Prof. Dr Georg Nagel (Julius-Maximilian-Universität-Würzburg) and Prof. Dr Karl Deisseroth (Stanford University, USA) the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning light-controlled ion channels and optogenetics.

“I would like to offer my warmest congratulations to Peter Hegemann on winning the Nobel Prize – the world’s most prestigious scientific award! He is receiving the prize for his outstanding research in the field of optogenetics – with which he and his co-workers laid the foundation for a new era in the neurosciences,” says Prof. Dr Julia von Blumenthal, President of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. “Peter Hegemann is a visionary researcher: the discovery of light-controlled ion channels in green algae was made as part of a basic research project. Humboldt-Universität is more than fortunate to have Peter Hegemann amongst its researchers. It is largely thanks to his commitment that a new research building for the promising field of optobiology is currently being constructed in Berlin.”

The origins of optogenetics

Hegemann’s research began with the question of how single-celled green algae perceive light and orient their movement accordingly. As early as 1991, together with Dr Hartmann Harz (Ludwig Maximilian Universität München), he demonstrated that light triggers electrical ion currents in the green alga Chlamydomonas within a very short time.

Together with Georg Nagel and other researchers, Hegemann subsequently identified and characterised the channelrhodopsins responsible for this process. These extraordinary proteins combine a light sensor and an ion channel in a single molecule: light opens the channel, thereby altering a cell’s electrical potential within milliseconds. In 2002, the researchers described channelrhodopsin-1 as a directly light-controlled ion channel; this was followed in 2003 by the discovery of channelrhodopsin-2, which is particularly well suited for controlling the electrical activity of other cells using light.

These discoveries provided the molecular basis for optogenetics. Later in 2005, Karl Deisseroth and his colleagues demonstrated that channelrhodopsin-2 can be used in nerve cells to trigger electrical signals with millisecond precision using light. Since then, optogenetics has transformed the field of neurosciences as it led to the development of techniques by which specific types of nerve cells can be selectively activated or inhibited, thereby enabling investigation of their causal role in perception, movement, memory, emotions and behaviour.

Currently, optogenetics is primarily used in the neurosciences. However, its potential applications extend beyond this: light-sensitive proteins are increasingly being researched to specifically investigate and influence electrical and molecular processes in cell types other than neurons. For example, José-Alain Sahel (University of Pittsburgh, USA), together with colleagues, demonstrated that retinal cells rendered light-sensitive using an optogenetic technique were able to restore some visual perception in a blind patient. The versatility of optogenetics suggests that many more exciting advances lie ahead.

About Peter Hegemann

Peter Hegemann is the Hertie Senior Research Professor of Neuroscience at the Department of Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Hegemann completed his studies in chemistry at the Universität Münster and at the Ludwig Maximilian Universität München, and obtained his PhD in 1984 at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried. In 1985, he went to Syracuse University in New York as a postdoctoral researcher, where he was already trying to biochemically isolate the photoreceptor of the alga Chlamydomonas. After positions in Munich and Regensburg, he became Professor of Experimental Biophysics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2005. He has received numerous awards for his pioneering works in the field of optogenetics. In 2013, he received – together with the 2026 Nobel laureates Georg Nagel and Karl Deisseroth, as well as other colleagues – the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize; followed in 2021 by the Lasker Award, considered the most prestigious prize for biomedical research in the USA. In 2022, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize by Columbia University, jointly with Deisseroth and Prof. Dr Gero Miesenböck of the University of Oxford.


Three groundbreaking papers by Peter Hegemann and colleagues

 



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