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.
Photos: The Nobel Prize winners of 2012
Schekman, a professor at
the University of California, Berkeley, was honored for discovering a
set of genes required for the "vesicle traffic."
Sudhof, a professor at Stanford University, showed how vesicles are instructed precisely when to release molecules.
Schekman and Sudhof also are investigators at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Monday's ceremony at the
Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, will be followed by the
announcement of the physics prize Tuesday, the chemistry prize Wednesday
and the economics prize on October 14.
The Nobel Peace Prize
will be awarded in Oslo, Norway, on Friday. The prize for literature
will be awarded on a date to be announced later. Each prize comes with 8
million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million).
Swedish industrialist
Alfred Nobel created the prizes in 1895 to honor work in physics,
chemistry, literature and peace. The first economics prize was awarded
in 1969.
In 2012, the medical
Nobel Prize was awarded to Sir John B. Gurdon of England and Shinya
Yamanaka of Japan for work on reprogramming cells. Their work paved the
way for treatment breakthroughs.
