Medicine Nobel for optogenetics: joy at the University of Bayreuth too
The 2026 Nobel Prize goes to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel. In Bayreuth, biochemist Andreas Möglich is delighted: Hegemann is his long-time mentor.
Archive image · Photo: H. Wurst / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 de (cropped and resized)
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to American Karl Deisseroth and the Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel. The Nobel Committee at the Karolinska Institute honours the three for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. The method allows individual nerve cells in a living brain to be switched on and off with light. The prize is worth 12 million Swedish kronor.
There is great joy at the University of Bayreuth too, the Nordbayerischer Kurier reports. Prof. Andreas Möglich heads the Chair of Biochemistry there and researches photoreceptors and optogenetics. According to the newspaper, Peter Hegemann is his long-time mentor and companion; among other things, the two published a 2014 study in the journal PNAS on an enzyme that can be controlled with red light.
Möglich has been a professor in Bayreuth since April 2015. Before that, he led a junior research group in Berlin within the UniCat cluster of excellence. Fränkischer Tag speaks of a lively scientific exchange between Bayreuth and the laureates.