Nobel Prize goes to Karl Deisseroth for breakthrough in optogenetics

Dr Karl Deisseroth has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for helping open up optogenetics, a field of brain science that uses light and genes to switch neurons on and off in living brains. The 54-year-old Stanford University professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator shared the prize with researchers Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel in Germany.

Hours after learning of the honour early on Monday, Deisseroth was still taking congratulatory calls and speaking to journalists from his home in Stanford. But amid the attention, he also asked for a pause for a more ordinary job: making school lunches for his children before they woke up.

A self-described night owl, Deisseroth said he often works past midnight. After reviewing papers and emailing his students, he had just gone to lie down when he got the call from the Nobel Assembly in Stockholm. "I almost felt as if I’d lost the power of forming words," he told The Associated Press, adding, "but I recovered after a minute or two." He soon began giving interviews, helped by quick emails with Stanford’s communications staff. "No real sleep was achieved," he said about an hour after the announcement.

As AP science reporters spoke to him by phone and Zoom, an AP photographer and videographer went to his home in Stanford. The photographer arrived at about 3.30 am, saw Halloween decorations outside and only one light on inside, and briefly worried he had reached the wrong house before knocking on the door. Deisseroth’s wife, Dr Michelle Monje-Deisseroth, answered and brought him in. She was by the Nobel winner’s side when she was not making coffee for Stanford communications staff who had joined the celebration. Deisseroth said he was surprised by the Nobel Prize, but his wife was not.

During the interviews, Deisseroth spoke about the work he carried out with Hegemann and Nagel and what it could mean in practice. "For me, I’m a physician-scientist. I am a psychiatrist. I care about patients and my patients who have autism, who have depression," he said. "I care about the hope that this brings. But I’m also a basic scientist, and I care about understanding this amazing organ, the brain, and how it works and how it integrates and computes and delivers all the things that make us human."

As the interviews ended, Deisseroth told Stanford staff that he needed an hour-long break starting at 6.30 am because his children would soon be up and would need lunches before leaving for school. When a Stanford representative wondered whether neighbours would mind the late-night activity, Monje-Deisseroth said they lived in faculty housing and added, "There are a lot of Nobels in the neighbourhood." The morning, then, captured both the scale of the award and the routine of family life at home.