The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's 1895 will, are awarded "to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind". Nobel Prizes are awarded in the fields of Physics, Medicine or Physiology, Chemistry, Literature, and Peace.
A telomere is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences associated with specialized proteins at the ends of linear chromosomes. Telomeres are a widespread genetic feature most commonly found in eukaryotes. In most, if not all species possessing them, they protect the terminal regions of chromosomal DNA from progressive degradation and ensure the integrity of linear chromosomes by preventing DNA repair systems from mistaking the very ends of the DNA strand for a double-strand break.
Telomerase, also called terminal transferase, is a ribonucleoprotein that adds a species-dependent telomere repeat sequence to the 3' end of telomeres. A telomere is a region of repetitive sequences at each end of the chromosomes of most eukaryotes. Telomeres protect the end of the chromosome from DNA damage or from fusion with neighbouring chromosomes. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster lacks telomerase, but instead uses retrotransposons to maintain telomeres.
Molecular genetics is a branch of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the structure and/or function of genes in an organism's genome using genetic screens.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and quantitative biology. It is located in Laurel Hollow on Long Island, New York.
Leslie Eleazer Orgel FRS was a British chemist. He is known for his theories on the origin of life.
Elizabeth Helen Blackburn is an Australian-American Nobel laureate who is the former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In 1984, Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere, with Carol W. Greider. For this work, she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing it with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak, becoming the first Australian woman Nobel laureate.
Thomas Robert Cech is an American chemist who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Sidney Altman for their discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA. Cech discovered that RNA could itself cut strands of RNA, suggesting that life might have started as RNA. He found that RNA can not only transmit instructions, but that it can act as a speed up the necessary reactions.
Homologous recombination is a type of genetic recombination in which genetic information is exchanged between two similar or identical molecules of double-stranded or single-stranded nucleic acids.
In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protein-coding genes and non-coding genes. During gene expression, DNA is first copied into RNA. RNA can be directly functional or be the intermediate template for the synthesis of a protein.
Andrew Zachary Fire is an American biologist and professor of pathology and of genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Craig C. Mello, for the discovery of RNA interference (RNAi). This research was conducted at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and published in 1998.
Carolyn Widney Greider is an American molecular biologist and Nobel laureate. She is a Distinguished Professor of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Alexey Matveyevich Olovnikov was a Russian biologist. Among other things, in 1971, he was the first to recognize the problem of telomere shortening, to predict the existence of telomerase, and to suggest the telomere hypothesis of aging and the relationship of telomeres to cancer.
The history of genetics can be represented on a timeline of events from the earliest work in the 1850s, to the DNA era starting in the 1940s, and the genomics era beginning in the 1970s.
Titia de Lange is the Director of the Anderson Center for Cancer Research, the Leon Hess professor and the head of Laboratory Cell Biology and Genetics at Rockefeller University.
Bryant Villeponteau is an American scientist, entrepreneur, and longevity expert who has worked in both academia and industry.
Victoria Lundblad is an American geneticist whose work focuses on the genetic control of chromosome behavior in yeast. Many of her discoveries have concerned telomerase, the RNA-containing enzyme that completes the ends of chromosomes. She works at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.
A phosphorimidazolide is a chemical compound in which a phosphoryl mono-ester is covalently bound to a nitrogen atom in an imidazole ring. They are a type of phosphoramidate. These phosphorus (V) compounds are encountered as reagents used for making new phosphoanhydride bonds with phosphate mono-esters, and as reactive intermediates in phosphoryl transfer reactions in some enzyme-catalyzed transformations. They are also being studied as critical chemical intermediates for the polymerization of nucleotides in pre-biotic settings. They are sometimes referred to as phosphorimidazolidates, imidazole-activated phosphoryl groups, and P-imidazolides.
