U.S. Researchers Recognized for Work on Telomeres

摘要

An enzyme that keeps cells from premature death has won a bit of immortality for the scientists who discovered it.rnThis year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine recognizes the discovery of a key mechanism that cells use to protect their genetic information. Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco; Carol Greider of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland; and Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School in Boston will each receive one-third of the $ 1.4 million prize for their work describing telomeres, the repetitive DNA that caps the ends of chromosomes, and telomerase, thernenzyme that makes the caps. The trio has long been considered top contenders for the prize. "I've been hoping for this for about 10 years. I'm thrilled," says Titia de Lange of Rockefeller University in New York City, who studies telomeres.