Cell experts scoop Nobel
2004-10-06 12:21
Stockholm - Israelis Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko and American Irwin Rose won the 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Tuesday for their work in discovering ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.
Ciechanover, 57; Hershko, 67; and Irwin Rose, 78, were honoured by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for their work in the 1980s that discovered one of the cell's most important cyclical processes, regulated protein degradation.
"Thanks to the work of the three laureates it is now possible to understand at molecular level how the cell controls a number of central processes by breaking down certain proteins and not others," the academy said in its citation.
"Examples of processes governed by ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation are cell division, DNA repair, quality control of newly-produced proteins, and important parts of the immune defence."
On the net:
www.nobelprize.org
- AP