Bert Sakmann
Sakmann, Bert (1942-) is a German physiologist. He won a share of the 1991 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering how ions flow in and out of cells. Sakmann shared the prize with his research partner, German physicist Erwin Neher.
Sakmann was born on June 12, 1942, in Stuttgart, Germany. His father, Bertold Sakmann, was a theater director. His mother, Annemarie Schaefer Sakmann, was a physiotherapist. Sakmann graduated from the University of Munich in 1967 and received an M.D. degree from the University of Göttingen in 1974.
Sakmann has spent almost his entire scientific career at various institutes of the Max Planck Society. In 1969 and 1970, he worked as a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, where he met Erwin Neher. Sakmann studied the retina, the light-sensitive cells of the eye.
In 1970, Sakmann married Christiane Wulfert, an ophthalmologist (a physician who treats diseases of the eye). They had three children.
Sakmann left the institute in Munich to study biophysics and work as a research assistant in England with the German-born British physiologist Bernard Katz at University College, part of the University of London, from 1971 to 1973. He then returned to Germany.
From 1974 to 1989, Sakmann was a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, where he shared a laboratory with Neher. Sakmann and Neher did most of their research there in the mid- to late 1970's. Their earliest experiments included studying cells of animal muscles. Sakmann served as head of the Membrane Physiology Unit at Göttingen from 1983 to 1985. He established a new Department of Cell Physiology there in 1985 and headed it until 1988. Sakmann also helped teach a summer course in the United States at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Sakmann and Neher developed a new technique for studying the electrical activity of living cells, which they perfected in 1980. Their research increased understanding of how the positively and negatively charged atoms called ions flow in and out of cells. The two scientists studied ion channels, tunnel-like passageways in cell membranes that serve as gateways for the flow of ions. When ions pass through these channels, they produce a tiny electric current. Sakmann and Neher developed the patch clamp technique to measure the current produced. The technique is so named because a recording electrode in a tiny, thin glass pipette (tube) fastens to a microscopic patch of cell membrane. The patch clamp allows scientists to “listen” to a specific ion channel without its signals getting drowned out by the electrical noise of the whole membrane.
The patch clamp technique also enables scientists to measure how ion channels change shape while regulating the flow of ions in and out of the cell.
The patch clamp quickly developed into one of the most widely used tools in cell biology. It has been used to study the regulation of hormones—including the production of the hormone insulin in the disease diabetes—and the hereditary disease cystic fibrosis. The patch clamp technique also has enabled scientists to study treatments for diseases such as heart disease, epilepsy, and various disorders that affect the muscles and the nervous system.
Sakmann's work was recognized with many awards in addition to the Nobel Prize. He received the Nernst Prize from the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry in 1977, the Feldberg Foundation Prize from the United Kingdom in 1979, the Magnes Award from the Hebrew University of Israel in 1982, the Spencer Award from Columbia University in the United States in 1983, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Award from Columbia in 1986, and the International Gairdner Award of the Gairdner Foundation in 1989.
In 1989, Sakmann left the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen to become director of the Department of Cell Physiology at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany. In 1990, he took an additional position as professor at the University of Heidelberg. Sakmann was elected as a foreign member to the National Academy of Sciences of the United States in 1993 and to the Royal Society of the United Kingdom in 1994.