A life in context
The person behind the prize
Hegemann completed his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in 1984. His research on how microorganisms respond to light helped connect the biology of algae with experimental neuroscience.
The contribution
He and collaborators investigated algal light-sensitive proteins, contributing to the discovery of channelrhodopsins that became key optogenetic tools.
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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