Status: 09/24/2021 6:00 p.m.
Optogenetics is a new way to study the brain. Two German researchers also laid the foundations for this. You and a US colleague have now received the prestigious Lasker Foundation award.
Controlling the activity of nerve cells with the help of light – that is the idea of optogenetics. A method with which the functioning of the nerve networks in our brain can be observed very closely. In the meantime, therapies for brain diseases such as Parkinson’s or schizophrenia are being researched. There are initial successes in the treatment of retinal diseases.
Stanford researcher relies on rhodopsins
The basis for this was discovered in 1970 by the Munich biochemist Dieter Oesterhelt. He found that certain light-sensitive proteins are not only found in the retina of animals. They also exist in bacteria. And in green algae, as Oesterhelt’s colleague Peter Hegemann found out. Hegemann is now a professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin, while Oesterhelt is emergent director at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich.
Dieter Oesterhelt discovered the fundamentals of optogenetics as early as 1970.
Initially, these proteins, so-called rhodopsins, were just interesting model organisms. But in 2004 the US researcher Karl Deisseroth from Stanford University pricked up his ears. He used the rhodopsins as tools for brain research.
And soon the Nobel Prize?
The three researchers have now been rewarded with the Lasker Prize for their optogenetics and the discovery of light-sensitive proteins, without which the new technology would not be possible. The award is considered the most important biomedical research award in the USA. Many winners later receive the Nobel Prize.