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Nobel Prize/Chemistry: Three Discovered Cell System That Marks Proteins For Death October 7, 2004 NOBEL1007 STOCKHOLM -- Two Israelis and an American won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for showing how cells can give a "kiss of death" to destroy unwanted proteins, a finding that could help scientists find new medicines for cancer and other diseases. The award marks the first time an Israeli has won a Nobel science prize. Like most fields, modern biology focuses most of its attention on how things are built and created: how a cell reads the blueprints encoded in DNA and how it takes that information to manufacture proteins in molecular factories. This year's winners worked on the opposite and less glamorous function of a cell: how it breaks down proteins that are damaged or have outlived their usefulness. The winners are Aaron Ciechanover, 57, and Avram Hershko, 67, both professors of biochemistry at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, and Irwin A. Rose, 78, a scientist at the University of California, Irvine. They will each get one-third of the $1.3 million prize. The cell's custodial duties have turned out to be much more than just taking out the trash. Rather, they act more like a sophisticated inventory-control program. The quick removal of specific proteins tells the cell when to divide, when to turn on or turn off various functions, when to die. Understanding these processes also helps to understand diseases that occur when they go awry, including cystic fibrosis, Parkinson's disease and many types of cancer. The disposal of proteins is "crucial to almost any cellular process that anybody has studied," said Mark Hochstrasser, a professor of biophysics at Yale University. Until about a decade ago, though, almost no one realized the importance, he said. "The focus at that time was on how proteins were made," he said, "and in some quarters it was believed protein degradation was of little or no consequence. It was rather risky to work on it." Hershko and Rose, however, each had a long interest in the cell's disposal system. "I realized this was an important problem and a few other people in the world were working on it at that time," Rose said. At a news conference in Haifa, the Israelis said they hope their work will lead to new advances in the treatment of cancer. Said Hershko: "It does not mean that a miracle drug to beat cancer is on the way. But I do believe there will be advances in the treatment of cancer based on our work. This I truly believe in." The New York Times and Associated Press contributed to this report. SOURCE: Minneapolis Star Tribune,MN http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/5020047.html Reference: NIH Grantees Win 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Study of Protein Degradation Pathway http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/oct2004/od-06.htm * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn