Oh my, I seemed to have almost missed Nobel Prize week, one of my favorite weeks of the year! Monday was day one... I'm so behind.
As always, the primer: The Nobel Prize series is named after Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor and entrepreneur living at the dawn of the 20th century who bequeathed much of his fortune to the Nobel Foundation. The prizes, awarded since 1901, and including awards of $1.5 million for innovation in Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Economics, are given annually by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2009 is jointly awarded to Elizabeth H. Blackburn (USA), Carol W. Greider (USA), and Jack W. Szostak (USA) "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase." From the press release, on Blackburn, Greider, and Szostak's discovery of "how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation":
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.
If the telomeres are shortened, cells age. Conversely, if telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained, and cellular senescence is delayed. This is the case in cancer cells, which can be considered to have eternal life. Certain inherited diseases, in contrast, are characterized by a defective telomerase, resulting in damaged cells. The award of the Nobel Prize recognizes the discovery of a fundamental mechanism in the cell, a discovery that has stimulated the development of new therapeutic strategies.
[...]
These discoveries had a major impact within the scientific community. Many scientists speculated that telomere shortening could be the reason for ageing, not only in the individual cells but also in the organism as a whole. But the ageing process has turned out to be complex and it is now thought to depend on several different factors, the telomere being one of them. Research in this area remains intense.
Most normal cells do not divide frequently, therefore their chromosomes are not at risk of shortening and they do not require high telomerase activity. In contrast, cancer cells have the ability to divide infinitely and yet preserve their telomeres. How do they escape cellular senescence? One explanation became apparent with the finding that cancer cells often have increased telomerase activity. It was therefore proposed that cancer might be treated by eradicating telomerase. Several studies are underway in this area, including clinical trials evaluating vaccines directed against cells with elevated telomerase activity.
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In conclusion, the discoveries by Blackburn, Greider and Szostak have added a new dimension to our understanding of the cell, shed light on disease mechanisms, and stimulated the development of potential new therapies.
Yay telomerase!
On to Day 2. The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2009 is half-awarded to Charles K. Kao (China) "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication"" and jointly half-awarded to Willard S. Boyle (USA) and George E. Smith (USA) "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor."
From the press release on Kao's breakthrough on fiber optics:
In 1966, Charles K. Kao made a discovery that led to a breakthrough in fiber optics. He carefully calculated how to transmit light over long distances via optical glass fibers. With a fiber of purest glass it would be possible to transmit light signals over 100 kilometers, compared to only 20 meters for the fibers available in the 1960s. Kao's enthusiasm inspired other researchers to share his vision of the future potential of fiber optics. The first ultrapure fiber was successfully fabricated just four years later, in 1970.
Today optical fibers make up the circulatory system that nourishes our communication society. These low-loss glass fibers facilitate global broadband communication such as the Internet. Light flows in thin threads of glass, and it carries almost all of the telephony and data traffic in each and every direction. Text, music, images and video can be transferred around the globe in a split second.
If we were to unravel all of the glass fibers that wind around the globe, we would get a single thread over one billion kilometers long – which is enough to encircle the globe more than 25 000 times – and is increasing by thousands of kilometers every hour.
And from the press release on Boyle and Smith's contribution to the revolution that is digital photography:
In 1969 Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith invented the first successful imaging technology using a digital sensor, a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device). The CCD technology makes use of the photoelectric effect, as theorized by Albert Einstein and for which he was awarded the 1921 year's Nobel Prize. By this effect, light is transformed into electric signals. The challenge when designing an image sensor was to gather and read out the signals in a large number of image points, pixels, in a short time.
The CCD is the digital camera's electronic eye. It revolutionized photography, as light could now be captured electronically instead of on film. The digital form facilitates the processing and distribution of these images. CCD technology is also used in many medical applications, e.g. imaging the inside of the human body, both for diagnostics and for microsurgery.
Digital photography has become an irreplaceable tool in many fields of research. The CCD has provided new possibilities to visualize the previously unseen. It has given us crystal clear images of distant places in our universe as well as the depths of the oceans.
That was much, more more comprehensible than last year's award ""for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."
Internet and digital cameras for everyone! And then some anti-aging telomerase, on the rocks, please.
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