A green particle is floating in the sunlight touching the fresh water pond! The algae named 'Chlamydomonas' is only 0.015 millimeters in diameter. A single-celled organism has no brain or nervous system. Yet it contains an 'eye-spot', or light-sensitive point, only one micrometer wide. which detects the light source and changes direction accordingly. This year's Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to 3 scientists Carl Dyserth, Peter Hagemann and Georg Nagel. Among them, in Hagemann's lab, a research student from India analyzed the genetic data of an alga and identified two light-sensitive proteins. This year's medical Nobel is about the journey that started from that observation. As such, the contribution of an Indian named Sunil Kateria has remained behind Hageman's research!
In 2001, Sunil came to Germany to do his doctorate. Currently he teaches at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Arriving in Regensburg at the turn of the new millennium, he began searching through the genetics of algae to answer a decades-old question. Sunil's research was about how the algae see without a brain or nervous system. And this time he found two light-sensitive proteins. A 2013 review of Hageman's own made that moment clear.
The new DNA sequence that Sunil identified carries the instructions for making the microorganism-friendly large protein rhodopsin. Later the research team named these two genes 'channelrhodopsin-1' and 'channelrhodopsin-2'. Yesterday, October 5, the 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for 'light-gated ion channels' and 'optogenetics'. Optogenetics is a method by which light can be used to activate or deactivate certain brain cells. And the Nobel Committee's own documents on this matter, there are references to both research papers. Sunil is credited as co-author in both cases.
But Sunil is cautious about this. According to him, this discovery was a collaborative effort led by his supervisor. But he also says the issue was never brain-centric. “A fundamental question before us was how does this alga detect light. And where are its genes located? We never thought that it would be used to control the human brain,” said Catteria. In fact, 25 years of patient and collaborative scientific effort have passed between the identification of the algae's genes and today's discovery. Sunil says, this journey is not over yet.