[1363] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Chronicle article: Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to 3 Scientists
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Shulman)
Mon Oct 7 10:36:16 2002
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 10:13:06 -0400
From: Peter Shulman <skip@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from:
skip@mit.edu
The following message was enclosed:
Congrats to Prof. Horvitz!
--**Peter
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This article is available online at this address:
http://chronicle.com/daily/2002/10/2002100703n.htm
- The text of the article is below -
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Monday, October 7, 2002
Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to 3 Scientists Who Study Cell
Death
By LILA GUTERMAN
For discoveries about the genes that control cellular suicide,
three biologists won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine,the Karolinska Institute announced this morning. The
winners are Sydney Brenner of the Salk Institute for
Biological Studies and the Molecular Sciences Institute, an
independentresearch organization in Berkeley, Calif.; H.
Robert Horvitz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
and John E. Sulston ofthe Sanger Centre, in Britain.
The three will share the prize money of $1.08-million.
To maintain the appropriate number of cells in any tissue or
organ, a fine balance exists between the creation of new
cellsthrough cellular division and the death of other cells
through programmed cell death, or apoptosis.
In the early 1960s, Mr. Brenner, realizing that the cells of
higher animals were difficult to study, established the idea
of using the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model
organism, one that thousands of biologists would later use to
make discoveries that often also pertain to human beings. The
worm reproduces quickly, has fewer than 1,000 cells,and is
transparent, so scientists can use microscopes to watch cell
division as it occurs. Mr. Brenner also demonstratedthat
specific genes could be mutated in C. elegans, by adding a
chemical that disrupted the worm's DNA.
In the 1970s, Mr. Sulston, extended the work on C. elegans by
mapping the exact process of cell division that occursin the
worm, progressing from a single fertilized egg to 959 cells in
the adult. He discovered that the same 131 cells in the worm
always die through apoptosis.
Mr. Horvitz, a professor of biology at MIT, then identified
the first two genes without which no programmed cell death
will occur in the worm. He also discovered a counterpart of
one of those genes in human hereditary material. Scientists
now know that humans have genes similar to most of the ones
involved in apoptosisin C. elegans.
While the laureates' discoveries have helped form the basis
for many accomplishments in modern developmental and
cellularbiology, they have also been of prime importance in
medicine. Too much apoptosis underlies many conditions, such
as neurodegenerative diseases, stroke, and heart attacks,
while in cancer and autoimmune diseases, not enough cells
commit suicide. Some cancer therapies in development aim to
stimulate the process of cell death.
The text of the Nobel announcement is available on the Nobel
Foundation's World Wide Web site.
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Copyright 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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