Professor Dr Erwin Neher

Research Priorities: Patch clamp technique, signal transmission, ion channels, calcium ion concentration, transmitter release, exocytosis, cell membrane channels, neurotransmitters, synaptic plasticity
Erwin Neher is a German biophysicist. His core research area has been signal mechanisms in cells. Neher and the German physician Bert Sakmann were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1991. The two researchers demonstrated the existence of ion channels in cell membranes, which are an important foundation of signal transmission. The basis for this discovery was the development of the “patch clamp technique”.
The patch clamp technique is an electrophysiological measuring technique with which minute amounts of current flowing in and between living cells can be measured. To create the technique, the two researchers developed a special glass pipette with a diameter of just one micrometre, which can enclose the cell membrane and measure the current flow within the isolated membrane patch. This extremely sensitive technique made it possible to investigate the characteristics of a single ion channel in the cell membrane.
Neher and Sakmann thus managed to prove for the first time that these channels exist in the cell membrane and that, in almost all cell types, charged elements enter the surrounding environment via hundreds of different types of ion channel. This was an important discovery for medicine, as further research showed that the cause of many diseases such as nerve or muscle pain and epilepsy resides in dysregulation of the flow of ions.
From 1983 onwards, Erwin Neher turned his attention to signal transmission processes within cells. He investigated calcium ion signals in individual cells and developed methods to measure the release of neurotransmitters and hormones from individual cells. In particular, he used the patch clamp technique to study exocytosis, which refers to the fusion of substance-filled vesicles with the cell membrane. By combining optical processes and photolytic manipulation of calcium ions he succeeded in demonstrating the quantitative link between calcium ion concentration and transmitter release.
Erwin Neher studies how the brain manages its flow of information and adjusts links between nerve cells – synapses – within seconds and sub-seconds. He also uses neuronal cell cultures and brain slices to investigate short-term plasticity mechanisms, such as those that underlie depression.