A life in context
The person behind the prize
Nagel studied biology and biophysics at Konstanz and earned his doctorate in Frankfurt. He joined Würzburg in 2004. His experiments examine proteins that move charged particles across cell membranes.
The contribution
Working with Hegemann and colleagues, he demonstrated that channelrhodopsins function as light-gated ion channels. Transferring these proteins to other cells made their use as biological switches possible.
The idea in plain language
Knowing which neurons are active is different from knowing what they cause. Optogenetics lets researchers change the activity of selected cells and observe what follows.
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