Nobel prize goes to 2 Americans
Photo courtesy of nobelprize.org
OSLO -- Two Americans and a German shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine this year.
Americans James E. Rothman and Randy W. Schekman, and German Thomas C. Sudhof were awarded the prize Monday for discoveries of how the body's cells decide when and where to deliver the molecules they produce.
The Nobel Assembly said the three "have solved the mystery of how the cell organizes its transport system."
Their work focuses on tiny bubbles inside cells called vesicles, which move hormones and other molecules within cells and sometimes outside them, such as when insulin is released into the bloodstream.
Disruptions of this delivery system contribute to diabetes, neurological diseases and immunological disorders.
Rothman, a professor at Yale University, detailed how protein machinery allows vesicles in cells to fuse with their targets to permit the transfer of molecular cargo.
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