Gero Miesenböck facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Gero Miesenböck
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Miesenböck in 2015
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| Born |
Gero Andreas Miesenböck
15 July 1965 |
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| Known for | Optogenetics |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neuroscience |
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Gero Andreas Miesenböck (born 15 July 1965) is a brilliant scientist from Austria. He is famous for inventing a super cool method called optogenetics. This method lets scientists control brain cells using light! He currently works as a professor at the University of Oxford in England.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Gero Miesenböck grew up in Austria. He studied at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and Umeå University in Sweden. He earned his medical degree in 1993. After that, he continued his training as a researcher with another famous scientist, James Rothman.
Discovering Optogenetics
Gero Miesenböck is known as the person who started the field of optogenetics. Imagine being able to turn brain cells on or off with a flash of light! That's what optogenetics allows.
He was the first scientist to change brain cells (called nerve cells) using DNA. This made their electrical activity controllable with light. He put special DNA into these cells. This DNA contained instructions for making light-sensitive proteins called opsins.
Miesenböck also used these changes to create animals whose brains had light-sensitive nerve cells. He showed that he could control the behavior of these animals from a distance. This was a huge step in understanding how brains work.
How Optogenetics Works
The idea of controlling cells with light, which Miesenböck developed, has become very popular. Scientists now use it in many different areas of biology. They have also made the technology even better.
Most of Miesenböck's research still uses Drosophila melanogaster, which are tiny fruit flies. By studying fruit flies, scientists can learn a lot about how the brain works. This includes how molecules and cells function. These discoveries can help us understand human health better.
Before becoming a professor at Oxford in 2007, Miesenböck worked at other well-known places. These included the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Yale University. In 2011, he helped start the Center for Neural Circuits and Behavior.
Awards and Recognition
Gero Miesenböck has received many important awards for his amazing work.
- In 2012, he won the InBev-Baillet Latour International Health Prize. This was for his new ways of using optogenetics to control nerve cell activity and animal behavior.
- In 2013, he shared "The Brain Prize" with other scientists. He also received the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award.
- In 2015, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). This is a very high honor for scientists in the UK. He was recognized for pioneering optogenetics and showing how it could control behavior.
- He also received the Heinrich Wieland Prize in 2015. This was for his groundbreaking idea of optogenetics.
- In 2016, he was awarded the Wilhelm Exner Medal.
Miesenböck is also a member of several important scientific groups. These include the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 2017, Trinity College Dublin gave him an honorary doctorate degree.
More recently, he has continued to receive major awards:
- In 2019, he won the Rumford Prize for his work on optogenetics.
- In the same year, he also received the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize.
- In 2020, he was awarded the Shaw Prize in Life Sciences.
- In 2022, he received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize.
- In 2023, he was honored with the Japan Prize.
