Sakmann, Bert (1942-…), is a German physician who helped develop a new technique for studying the electrical activity of living cells. For their discoveries using this technique, called the patch clamp, he and German research scientist Erwin Neher shared the 1991 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
Sakmann was born in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied at several different medical schools in Germany and France before earning an M.D. degree from the University of Gottingen.
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 left the Max Planck Society to study biophysics at University College London, part of the University of London, from 1971 to 1973. He returned to Germany in 1974 to do research at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen. He and Neher did most of their research there in the middle and late 1970’s. Sakmann served as head of the Membrane Physiology Unit at Gottingen from 1983 to 1985. In 1985, he established a new Department of Cell Physiology there and headed it until 1988. In 1989, he left Gottingen to become director of the Department of Cell Physiology at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg.
Sakmann and Neher’s research increased understanding of how the positively and negatively charged atoms called ions flow in and out of cells. The two scientists discovered ion channels, individual protein molecules 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 fastens to a microscopic patch of cell 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. The Nobel committee said that it “revolutionized modern biology and facilitated research.”
