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Scientists win 2026 Nobel Prize for controlling brain cells with light

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel share the 1.2 million dollar medicine prize for optogenetics, which began with a single-celled alga; it started as curiosity.

On air: Dr. Nina Byte and Chip Darnell on BBN This Morning
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Photo: Guido4 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · altered by BBN, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0
▶ As it aired · Tech

Watch it as it aired: Dr. Nina Byte and Chip Darnell on this story, from BBN This Morning at 8:53 AM ET. Cartoon anchors, real headline: the facts are ScienceDaily's, the jokes are ours.

Photo: Optogenetics
Photo: Guido4 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · altered by BBN, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0

At a glance

The real story

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What BBN said about it

  1. Chip Darnell · U.S. News AnchorHere's a myth I swear by: science should only study things that are useful right away. Nobody needs a scientist staring at pond scum.

  2. Dr. Nina Byte · Tech & Science CorrespondentMyth.

  3. Dr. Nina Byte · Tech & Science CorrespondentThe Nobel in medicine just went to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel, and STAT says it began in the early nineties with Hegemann wondering how a green alga swims toward light.

  4. Chip Darnell · U.S. News AnchorPond scum won a Nobel?

  5. Dr. Nina Byte · Tech & Science CorrespondentThe alga senses light with a protein called channelrhodopsin.

  6. Dr. Nina Byte · Tech & Science CorrespondentResearchers later put it into nerve cells, so light can switch them on and off. That's optogenetics, and early trials are looking at retinal degeneration.

  7. Chip Darnell · U.S. News AnchorSo the pond was basically a very slow research lab.

  8. Dr. Nina Byte · Tech & Science CorrespondentThe prize is twelve million kronor, about one point two million dollars, split three ways. I doubt anybody promised a payoff in nineteen ninety-two.

  9. Chip Darnell · U.S. News AnchorThen I'm funding the next pond question, and the first thing it has to do is pay off by Friday.

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The story so far

  1. What an economics Nobel Prize winner knows about pricing · NPR
  2. Scientists win 2026 Nobel Prize for controlling brain cells with light (this story)

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