I have been away from blogging for some days as I was a bit pre-occupied with some domestic works. But what a great way it would be to mark a come back to blogging by writing about some great people who used science to the larger benefit of the mankind. Nobel Prizes for Medicine, Physics and Chemistry for the year 2009 have been announced and I would like to take a look at the works of those eminent scientists that earned them the Noble Prize.
Nobel Prize for Medicine has been shared by Drs. Elizabeth H. Blackburn of University of California, San Francisco, Carol W. Greider of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore and Jack W. Szostak of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. They received the Nobel for the study of chromosome; about how they are copied in a complete way and how they are protected against degradation. With their studies the Nobel Laureates have found out that the reason for the phenomenon can be found out at the ends of the chromosomes – telomeres and by an enzyme named telomerase that creates the telomeres. From their findings it was understood that when telomeres are shortened, the cells age and if the telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained and cell death will be delayed. The eternal life of cancer cells is because the telomerase activity is high and hence the cells keep on growing. At the same time, some inherited diseases are because of defected and shortened telomeres that result in damaging of cells. This discovery has major impact in the future studies on finding medicines for cancer treatment and on the treatment of some of the inherited diseases found in human beings.
Charles K. Kao of Chinese University of Hong Kong, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, both of Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, US have shared the Nobel Prize for Physics for their inventions that tapped the potential of light. Charles Kao was awarded for his studies of optical fibres that are now used in the field of communication. The digital age and the Internet owe a great deal to the invention of Charles Kao. According to the Kao a ray of light that is directed into a fibre, bounces against the glass walls and will move forward since the refractive index of glass is higher than that of the surrounding air. Today telephone and data communication flows through network of optical glass fibre all around the world that would account to about 1 billion km. The information revolution that we see around us is largely due to this contribution of Charles Kao in the field of Physics. Willard Boyle and George Smith are awarded for their invention of digital image sensor – the Charged Coupled Device or the CCD. It is the technology with which we use the digital cameras for capturing high quality images and in the digital transfer of images. This technology is widely used in images taken in the space using space telescopes and in the transfer of images from distant objects.
The Nobel Laureates for Chemistry include Ada E. Yonath of Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University, New Haven and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of MRC Laboratory, Cambridge, and they are rewarded for mapping the ribosome, the cell’s own protein factory. Every living organism, from bacteria to human beings has ribosome in them and no living creature can live without them. Hence they are perfect targets for drugs and antibiotics mainly attack the ribosomes of bacteria and leave alone those of human beings. Therefore the studies of the Nobel Laureates, of mapping the ribosomes at the atomic level, will give a great impetus to the discovery of new drugs. Many bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics and this provides a great challenge to the medical field. The mapping of the ribosomes will therefore help in the creation of antibiotics that would surpass the resistance of the bacteria. The studies done by the Noble Laureates will go a long way in understanding how life’s core processes function and in finding new antibiotics against various diseases that afflict mankind.
(Information courtesy: Press release available at www.nobelprize.org)
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