nobel prize – Page 2

10.09.2013

2013 nobels

The 2013 Nobel prizes in medicine, physics, and chemistry were awarded this week, with the medals for literature, peace and economics are yet to come.

In medicine, James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Südhof received the prize for elucidating trafficking mechanisms within cells. Cells use vesicles (membrane enclosed bubbles) to transport different cargo between cellular compartments or to other cells. The three researchers won the award for discovering how these vesicles get directed to their intended target and how the cargo is eventually delivered. The Nobel summary can be found here.

In physics, the award goes to François Englert and Peter Higgs. Admittedly, I understand next to nothing about the Higgs boson, except that it is a subatomic particle that was confirmed to exist earlier this year. Particle physics is astonishing. You can read the summary here.

And in chemistry the prize goes to three scientists, Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel. These three chemists, have developed computational models for complex chemical systems. The researchers are being recognized for basically pioneering this whole field. The computations are relevant to multiple areas of chemistry including protein folding, electron transfer and catalysis. The Nobel report is here.

Congratulations to the newly minted laureates.

10.10.2012

nobel prize in chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to two Americans today for their work with G Protein Coupled Receptors. G-Protein Coupled receptors are ubiquitous in biological systems and are responsible for sending the signals that help us detect changes in our environment. They are especially important in neurotransmission and hormone signaling pathways. Also, half of known pharmaceutical targets are G-Protein coupled receptors. From the Nobel press release:

Your body is a fine-tuned system of interactions between billions of cells. Each cell has tiny receptors that enable it to sense its environment, so it can adapt to new situtations. Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka are awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for groundbreaking discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family of such receptors: G-protein–coupled receptors.

For a long time, it remained a mystery how cells could sense their environment. Scientists knew that hormones such as adrenalin had powerful effects: increasing blood pressure and making the heart beat faster. They suspected that cell surfaces contained some kind of recipient for hormones. But what these receptors actually consisted of and how they worked remained obscured for most of the 20th Century.

Lefkowitz started to use radioactivity in 1968 in order to trace cells’ receptors. He attached an iodine isotope to various hormones, and thanks to the radiation, he managed to unveil several receptors, among those a receptor for adrenalin: β-adrenergic receptor. His team of researchers extracted the receptor from its hiding place in the cell wall and gained an initial understanding of how it works.

The team achieved its next big step during the 1980s. The newly recruited Kobilka accepted the challenge to isolate the gene that codes for the β-adrenergic receptor from the gigantic human genome. His creative approach allowed him to attain his goal. When the researchers analyzed the gene, they discovered that the receptor was similar to one in the eye that captures light. They realized that there is a whole family of receptors that look alike and function in the same manner.

Today this family is referred to as G-protein–coupled receptors. About a thousand genes code for such receptors, for example, for light, flavour, odour, adrenalin, histamine, dopamine and serotonin. About half of all medications achieve their effect through G-protein–coupled receptors.

Also, check out the New York Times.

10.09.2012

nobel prize in physics

Today brought another nobel prize award announcement. A French scientist and an American scientist share the awards for their work on measuring quantum systems. From the Nobel press release:

Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland have independently invented and developed methods for measuring and manipulating individual particles while preserving their quantum-mechanical nature, in ways that were previously thought unattainable.

The Nobel Laureates have opened the door to a new era of experimentation with quantum physics by demonstrating the direct observation of individual quantum particles without destroying them. For single particles of light or matter the laws of classical physics cease to apply and quantum physics takes over. But single particles are not easily isolated from their surrounding environment and they lose their mysterious quantum properties as soon as they interact with the outside world. Thus many seemingly bizarre phenomena predicted by quantum physics could not be directly observed, and researchers could only carry out thought experiments that might in principle manifest these bizarre phenomena.

Through their ingenious laboratory methods Haroche and Wineland together with their research groups have managed to measure and control very fragile quantum states, which were previously thought inaccessible for direct observation. The new methods allow them to examine, control and count the particles.

GOLLYGEE!

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2013 nobels

nobel prize in chemistry

nobel prize in physics