The discovery of artemisinin and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

<正>1 Summary The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Professor Tu You You for her key contributions to the discovery of artemisinin.Artemisinin has saved millions of lives and represents one of the significant contributions of China to global health.Many scientists were in-     

2000年诺贝尔生理学／医学奖与神经科学发展

20 0 0年 1 0月 9日 ,ＫａｒｏｌｉｎｓｋａＩｎｓｔｉｔｕｔｅｔ诺贝尔委员会决定将 2 0 0 0年诺贝尔生理学 /医学奖授予ＡｒｖｉｄＣａｒｌｓｓｏｎ ,ＰａｕｌＧｒｅｅｎｇａｒｄ和ＥｒｉｃＫａｎｄｅｌ三位科学家 ,作为对他们在“神经系统信号转导”方面至关重要发现的奖励[1] 。人大脑中有超过一千亿个神经元 ,他们通过极其复杂的神经网络彼此相连。从一个神经元发出的信息通过不同的化学神经递质传递给另一个神经元 ,这一过程发生在神经元间相接的特殊位点 ,称为“突触” ,一个神经元可以有数以千计这样的突触和其它神经元接触。三位诺…     

From fission to fusion: A perspective on the research that won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2013

Secretion is widespread in all eukaryotic cells: all of us experience this in the course of daily life – saliva, mucus, sweat, tears, bile juice, adrenalin, etc. – the list is extremely long. How does a cell manage to repeatedly spit out some stuff without losing the rest? The answer is: through regulated vesicle trafficking within the cell. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013 was awarded to Drs Randy Schekman, James E Rothman and Thomas C Südhof for their ‘discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells’. Dr Randy Schekman and his colleagues discovered a number of genes required for vesicle trafficking from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi; the James E Rothman group unravelled the protein machinery that allows vesicles to bud off from the membrane and fuse to their targets; and Dr Thomas C Südhof along with his colleagues revealed how calcium ions could instruct vesicles to fuse and discharge their contents with precision. These enabled the biotechnology industry to produce a variety of pharmaceutical and industrial products like insulin and hepatitis B vaccines, in a cost-efficient manner, using yeast and tissue cultured cells.     

1／4世纪的艾滋病毒研究——艾滋病毒的发现获得2008年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖

法国科学家弗朗索瓦丝·巴尔·西诺西和吕克·蒙塔尼因发现艾滋病毒而获得2008年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖。本文简述了艾滋病毒的发现及25年来在HIV起源、致病、治疗和预防领域取得的研究进展。     

The 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine Is Awarded for Advances in Studying the Cell Cycle

Russian Journal of Genetics -     

The 2009 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: Werner Arber,Physiology or Medicine 1978

Swiss microbial geneticist, Werner Arber shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans for their discovery of restriction endonucleases.Werner Arber was born in Granichen, Switzerland in 1929. Following a public school education, he entered the Swiss Polytechnical School in Zurich in 1949, working toward a diploma in natural sciences. There, his first research experience involved isolating and characterizing an isomer of chlorine. Following graduation in 1953, Arber joined a graduate program at the University of Geneva, taking on an assistanceship in electron microscopy (EM), in which he studied gene transfer in the bacterial virus (bacteriophage) lambda. Eventually encountering limitations with EM as a tool, he began using microbial genetics as a methodology for his studies. The study of microbial genetics had been possible for a relatively short time: DNA had been discovered to carry genetic information only a decade before he d entered the field.After earning his Ph.D. in 1958, Arber continued to develop skills in microbial genetics, working with colleagues in the United States for a short time before returning to Geneva at beginning of 1960. There, he continued working on lambda transduction in E. coli, but found that the virus would not efficiently propagate. Recalling research done seven years earlier by Joe Bertani and Jean Weigle on "host-controlled restriction-modification", he realized there must be a host-controlled modification of the invading DNA, and sought to identify the mechanism. Based on Grete Kallengerger s work that demonstrated degradation of both irradiated and non-irradiated phage lambda following injection in a host, Arber and his graduate student, Daisy Dussoix further investigated the fate of DNA, and found that restriction and modification (later determined to be postreplicative nuclotide methylation) directly affected DNA, but did not cause mutations. They also found that theses were properties of the bacterial strains, and that both viral and cellular DNA were degraded. Together, Arber and Dussoix reported their findings to scientific community in 1961 at the First International Biophysics Congress in Stockholm. Aber also presented the research to the Science Faculty of University of Geneva in 1962, earning the Plantamour-Prevost prize. Based on his work and the work of others, he hypothesized that an enzyme in the host bacterium cut DNA into smaller pieces at specific sites, and methylase modified the host DNA to protect it from the digestive enzyme. These theories were later confirmed by Urs Kuhnlein, who found that mutation of specific sites rendered the phage resistant to cleavage; Hamilton smith, who identified Type II endonuclease HindII; and Daniel Nathans, who used HindII to break the SV40 virus into 11 fragments, allowing him to determine its method of replication.Since the discovery of restriction endonucleases, researchers have used them as tools to study the functions of genes of all types of organisms. Restriction enzymes have also facilitated the study of gene functions and enabled production of substances of medical and nutritional importance. Arber feels that in the next few decades we will learn much from the study of epigentics --factors that can affect the phenotype of an organism without changing the genetic information--. He is proud that, in that studying restriction degradation and DNA methylation in the 1960s, he was among the first in studying epigenetic phenomenon.Download video file.^{(118M, mp4)}     

改造老鼠基因收获诺贝尔奖——2007年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖解读

3位英美科学因在胚胎干细胞和哺乳动物DNA重组方面的一系列突破性发现,为“基因靶向”技术的发展奠定了基础,荣获2007年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖。基因靶向技术已广泛应用于基因功能研究、人类疾病动物模型的研制以及经济动物遗传物质的改良等方面,给现代生物学和医学研究带来了革命性的变化,并直接引发了现代生物学和医学研究各个领域中许多突破性的进展,成为后基因组时代研究基因功能最直接和最有效的方法之一。