The first Nobel of 2009: Physiology or Medicine

al nobel.jpg Nature’s full news story on this prize is now live: Chromosome protection scoops Nobel

And we’re off! The first Nobel of the 2009 season has gone to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak. All three share the prize equally for “the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase”.

The prize committee notes:

The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres being the caps on their ends. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation. Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA. These discoveries explained how the ends of the chromosomes are protected by the telomeres and that they are built by telomerase.

The work of these three, says the prize committee, has added a “new dimension” to our understanding of cells and disease and provided a new avenue for treatments (more here).

The committee references three papers for this newly-Nobel winning work: two in Cell and one in Nature.

Congratulations to all, and to the University of California, San Francisco, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Harvard Medical School [corrected 10/5] in Massachusetts which all now have one more laureate on their staff.

This year’s Physiology or Medicine prize is the 100th ever awarded. A full news story on this prize will appear shortly on Nature News. Tune in tomorrow for the physics prize.

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