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发帖数: 214 | 1 Niklas Pollard
Reuters
8:24 a.m. CDT, October 7, 2013
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Three U.S.-based scientists won the 2013 Nobel
medicine prize on Monday for their work on how hormones and enzymes are
transported within and outside cells, giving insight into diseases such as
diabetes and Alzheimer's.
Americans James Rothman, 62, Randy Schekman, 64, and German-born Thomas
Suedhof, 57, separately mapped out one of the body's critical networks that
uses tiny bubbles known as vesicles to ferry chemicals such as insulin
within cells.
The system, which also describes how vesicles transport molecules to the
cell surface for secretion, is so critical and sensitive that errors and
disruption in the mechanism can lead to serious illness or death.
"Without this wonderfully precise organization, the cell would lapse into
chaos," the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said in a
statement when awarding the prize of 8 million crowns ($1.2 million).
"Through their discoveries, Rothman, Schekman and Suedhof have revealed the
exquisitely precise control system for the transport and delivery of
cellular cargo."
For example, their research sheds light on how insulin, which controls blood
sugar levels, is manufactured and released into the blood at the right
place at the right time, the Nobel committee said in the statement.
Diabetes and some brain disorders have been attributed at least in part to
defects in the vesicle transport systems.
Rothman is professor at Yale University, Schekman is a professor at the
University of California at Berkeley, while Suedhof is a professor at
Stanford University. The three, working separately, adopted quite different
approaches to the problem, reflecting their own scientific specialisms.
"HOW CELLS WORK"
"My first reaction was, "Oh, my god!" said Schekman, who was woken with the
good news in the early hours of his morning. "That was also my second
reaction," he added, according to a Berkeley University statement.
Suedhof, a U.S. citizen, professed similar surprise.
"It blew me over," he told Reuters. "Every scientist dreams of getting a
Nobel prize. It's something I often tell my kids. If you lose your dreams
you lose your reason to live."
Medicine is the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year. Prizes for
achievements in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 in
accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel.
Suedhof said the work was really about "cell traffic", the ability of cells
to move material around.
"We have met each other many many times and argued and sometimes agreed and
sometimes disagreed," he said of his fellow prize winners. "We really work
in quite distinct areas of science."
Professor Patrik Rorsman of Oxford University said the award was timely and
well deserved. "It is such a fundamental process they have studied and
explained.
"Their discoveries could perhaps have clinical implications in psychiatric
diseases, but my guess is that they will be more useful for the
understanding of how cells work."
The committee said the work could help in understanding immuno-deficiency,
as well as brain disorders such as autism.
Schekman, a geneticist, first became interested in how proteins move within
cells in 1974. At the University of California, Berkeley, he began working
on yeast, a single cell microorganism. Research showed his findings applied
equally to human cells
Among Schekman's research aims is to study whether the accumulation of the
protein amyloid in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients is due to
disruption of the vesicle system.
Suedhof, a neuroscientist, has focused particularly on the brain and
questions of human thought and perception, emotions and actions determined
by signaling between neurons, cells which constitute the foundation of the
nervous system.
"I'm interested in understanding how is it possible for one cell to talk to
the other ... This field is one of the most fundamental fields involved in
understanding how the brain works, which is one of the most important
questions in biology today."
Jan-Inge Henter, professor of clinical child oncology at the Karolinska
Institute, said at a news conference:
"For quite some time, it's been known that this is important in the
signaling between neurons, that is nerve cells. We have billions of nerve
cells and they have to communicate with each other and they do so with this
vesicle transport system.
"Now, we've realized that this is also important in for instance diabetes,
because we know that insulin is released by these vesicles and we know that
the immune system is regulated also by this vesicle transport mechanism."
(Reporting by Stockholm Newsroom; additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen
in Chicago and Kate Kelland in London.; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and
Ralph Boulton) | a***y
发帖数: 19743 | 2 两个犹太人和一个德国人？
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【在 d****d 的大作中提到】
: Niklas Pollard
: Reuters
: 8:24 a.m. CDT, October 7, 2013
: STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Three U.S.-based scientists won the 2013 Nobel
: medicine prize on Monday for their work on how hormones and enzymes are
: transported within and outside cells, giving insight into diseases such as
: diabetes and Alzheimer's.
: Americans James Rothman, 62, Randy Schekman, 64, and German-born Thomas
: Suedhof, 57, separately mapped out one of the body's critical networks that
: uses tiny bubbles known as vesicles to ferry chemicals such as insulin
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