NOBLE PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY 2015
Press Release
7 October 2015
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2015 to
Tomas Lindahl
Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory, Hertfordshire, UK
Paul Modrich
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA
and
Aziz Sancar
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
“for mechanistic studies of DNA repair"
The cells’ toolbox for DNA repair
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 is awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar
for having mapped, at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA
and safeguard the genetic information. Their work has provided
fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for
instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments.
Each day our DNA is damaged by UV
radiation, free radicals and other carcinogenic substances, but even
without such external attacks, a DNA molecule is inherently unstable.
Thousands of spontaneous changes to a cell’s genome occur on a daily
basis. Furthermore, defects can also arise when DNA is copied during
cell division, a process that occurs several million times every day in
the human body.
The reason our genetic material does not disintegrate into complete
chemical chaos is that a host of molecular systems continuously monitor
and repair DNA. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 awards three
pioneering scientists who have mapped how several of these repair
systems function at a detailed molecular level.
In the early 1970s, scientists believed that DNA was an extremely
stable molecule, but Tomas Lindahl demonstrated that DNA decays at a
rate that ought to have made the development of life on Earth
impossible. This insight led him to discover a molecular machinery,
base excision repair, which constantly counteracts the collapse of our DNA.
Aziz Sancar has mapped
nucleotide excision repair, the
mechanism that cells use to repair UV damage to DNA. People born with
defects in this repair system will develop skin cancer if they are
exposed to sunlight. The cell also utilises nucleotide excision repair
to correct defects caused by mutagenic substances, among other things.
Paul Modrich has demonstrated how the cell corrects errors that occur
when DNA is replicated during cell division. This mechanism,
mismatch repair,
reduces the error frequency during DNA replication by about a
thousandfold. Congenital defects in mismatch repair are known, for
example, to cause a hereditary variant of colon cancer.
The Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2015 have provided fundamental
insights into how cells function, knowledge that can be used, for
instance, in the development of new cancer treatments.
Tomas Lindahl, Swedish citizen. Born 1938 in
Stockholm, Sweden. Ph.D. 1967 from Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm,
Sweden. Professor of Medical and Physiological Chemistry at University
of Gothenburg 1978–82. Emeritus group leader at Francis Crick Institute
and Emeritus director of Cancer Research UK at Clare Hall Laboratory,
Hertfordshire, UK.
http://crick.ac.uk/research/a-z-researchers/emeritus-scientists/tomas-lindahl/
Paul Modrich, U.S. citizen. Born 1946. Ph.D.
1973 from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. Investigator at Howard
Hughes Medical Institute and James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry at
Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA.
http://www.biochem.duke.edu/paul-l-modrich-primary
Aziz Sancar, U.S. and Turkish citizen. Born 1946 in
Savur, Turkey. Ph.D. 1977 from University of Texas, Dallas, TX, USA.
Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University
of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
http://www.med.unc.edu/biochem/people/faculty/primary/asancar
Prize amount: 8 million Swedish krona, to be shared equally between the laureates.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, founded in
1739, is an independent organisation whose overall objective is to
promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society. The
Academy takes special responsibility for the natural sciences and
mathematics, but endeavours to promote the exchange of ideas between
various disciplines.
Article taken from: http://www.nobelprize.org
