Karl Alexander Deisseroth was born on November 18, 1971. He is an American scientist and doctor. At Stanford University, he holds the title of D.H. Chen Foundation Professor of Bioengineering and is also a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

He is known for creating technologies such as hydrogel-tissue chemistry (for example, CLARITY and STARmap) and optogenetics. He uses methods that combine light and genetic techniques to study how brain circuits work normally and how they break down in neurological and psychiatric illnesses.

In 2019, Deisseroth was chosen as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering for his work on understanding how neurons send signals in animals, both healthy and sick, using tools that involve molecules and light. He is also a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the US National Academy of Medicine.

Education

Deisseroth received a Bachelor of Arts degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard University in 1992. He also earned an MD–PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University in 1998. After that, he completed his medical internship and psychiatry residency at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Career

Since 2004, Deisseroth has directed his research team at Stanford University. He works as a doctor at Stanford Hospital and Clinics and has partnered with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) since 2009. From 2014 to 2019, he taught as a visiting professor at Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

In 2021, he wrote a book titled Projections: A Story of Human Emotions, published by Random House. In the book, he discussed where human emotions come from by sharing stories from his work with patients who have mental health conditions.

Research

Light-gated ion channels, optogenetics, and neural circuits of behavior

In 2006, K. Deisseroth created the field called "optogenetics." He continued to develop tools for this field, which have been used in areas like psychiatry and neurology. In 2010, the journal Nature Methods named optogenetics "Method of the Year."

Deisseroth received many awards for his work. In 2010, he won the Nakasone Award. In 2013, he received the Lounsbery Award and the Dickson Prize in Science. In 2014, he won the Keio Medical Science Prize. In 2015, he received the Albany Prize, Lurie Prize, Dickson Prize in Medicine, and Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. He also won the 2015 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine, along with Edward Boyden and Gero Miesenböck. In 2016, Deisseroth and others won the Massry Prize for creating optogenetics, a technology that uses light to control cells in living tissues. He and Peter Hegemann also won the Harvey Prize in 2016 for discovering opsin molecules, which help microorganisms sense light, and for using these molecules to develop optogenetics. In 2018, Deisseroth received the Kyoto Prize, Japan's highest private award, for discovering optogenetics and creating tools to study how the brain works. In 2019, he and others won the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize. In 2020, he received the Heineken Prize for developing optogenetics.

Deisseroth also studied how light-gated ion channels work. His team created detailed images of these channels and discovered how they control the flow of ions and respond to different colors of light. He worked closely with Peter Hegemann on this research. Two major awards, the 2016 Harvey Prize and the 2018 Gairdner Award, recognized his work on understanding the structure and function of these channels.

Although Deisseroth's lab published the first scientific paper showing neurons could be activated with light in mid-2005, he noted that other scientists also worked on this idea and published their results in the following year. He mentioned Stefan Herlitze, Alexander Gottschalk, Georg Nagel, Hiromu Yawo, and Zhuo-Hua Pan, who published their findings in late 2005 and 2006. Deisseroth shared notebook pages from July 2004 showing his early experiments. He also pointed out that an earlier experiment in 1994 by Heberle and Büldt used a light-sensitive protein called bacteriorhodopsin in a non-neural system. Optogenetics became a major tool in neuroscience after scientists developed methods to target light-sensitive proteins to specific cells in living animals using genetic techniques.

Deisseroth has received several awards for his work, including:
– The 2018 Kyoto Prize for "causal systems neuroscience."
– The 2013 Pasarow Prize for "neuropsychiatry research."
– The 2013 Premio Citta di Firenze for "innovative technologies to study brain circuits linked to mental health conditions."
– The Redelsheimer Award for "advancing understanding of brain function."
– The 2017 Fresenius Prize for "discoveries in optogenetics and hydrogel-tissue chemistry, and research on brain circuits related to depression."

Chemical assembly of functional materials in tissue

Deisseroth also developed a new technology for creating useful materials inside living tissues. This method helps scientists study the structure and connections of cells in intact brains.

In 2013, Deisseroth led a team that created a technique called CLARITY. This method makes biological tissues, like mammalian brains, transparent so scientists can study them more easily. CLARITY has been widely used, and other scientists have developed similar methods since 2013.

A key feature of CLARITY is that it allows scientists to study tissues in new ways. For example, improved versions of CLARITY now help scientists analyze RNA, change the size of tissues, and perform detailed sequencing of genetic material inside intact tissues. One version, called STARmap, allows scientists to study the genetic makeup of individual cells in three dimensions.

Deisseroth has received several awards for developing CLARITY, including:
– The 2017 Fresenius Prize for "discoveries in optogenetics and hydrogel-tissue chemistry, and research on brain circuits related to depression."
– The 2015 Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences for "leading the development of optogenetics and CLARITY."
– The 2013 Premio Citta di Firenze.
– The Redelsheimer Award for "optogenetics, CLARITY, and other tools to study brain circuits."
– The 2015 Dickson Prize in Medicine.
– The 2020 Heineken Prize for Medicine for "developing optogenetics and hydrogel-tissue chemistry."