US biology trio wins Nobel Medicine Prize

Mon, Oct 2, 2017 | By publisher


Health

 

JEFFREY C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young, United States, geneticists were awarded the Nobel Medicine Prize on Monday, October 2, for shedding light on the internal biological clock that governs the wake-sleep cycles of most living things.

“Their discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth’s revolutions,” the Nobel Assembly announced.

Life on Earth is adapted to the rotation of our planet. For many years, scientists have known that living organisms, including humans, have an internal clock that help them anticipate and adapt to the rhythm of the day.

Hall, 72, Rosbash, 73, and Young, 68, “were able to peek inside our biological clock and elucidate its inner workings,” the Nobel Assembly said.

The clock influences such biological functions as hormone levels, sleep, body temperature and metabolism.

It is what causes jetlag — when our internal clock and external environment move out of sync when we change time zones.

Using the fruit fly as a model organism, this year’s laureates isolated a gene that controls the daily biological rhythm.

“They showed that this gene encodes a protein that accumulates in the cell during the night and is then degraded during the day,” the Nobel team said.

“Subsequently they identified additional protein components of this machinery, exposing the mechanism governing the self-sustaining clockwork inside the cell.”

The trio will share the prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about $1.1 million or 937,000 euros).

Last year, Yoshinori Ohsumi of Japan won the prestigious prize for his work on autophagy — a process whereby cells “eat themselves”, which when disrupted can cause Parkinson’s and diabetes.

– Oct. 2, 2017 @ 12:44 GMT |

 

Tags:


Association urges health practitioners, radiographers to uphold ethics of profession

THE Association of Radiographers of Nigeria (ARN), Lagos Branch, has called on healthcare professionals, especially radiographers to be engaged in...

Read More
WHO unveils Nigeria’s first climate health vulnerability, adaptation assessment report

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) unveiled Nigeria’s first-ever Climate Health Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment Report (VA) during the Health Sector-Wide...

Read More
Nigeria, 7 others begin African-led HIV vaccine development

NIGERIA and seven other African countries have begun a project to check HIV in the continent...

Read More