Rev. 12/01/2020
from MSNBC
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 7 — An American and two Britons won this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries about how genes regulate organ growth and a process of programmed cell suicide. Their findings shed new light on the development of many illnesses, including AIDS and strokes.
Sydney Brenner Salk Institute for Biological Studies Sir John Sulston Cambridge University Robert Horvitz Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Working with tiny worms, the laureates identified key genes regulating organ
development and programmed cell death, a necessary process for pruning
excess cells.
BRITONS Sydney Brenner, 75, and John E. Sulston, 60, and American H. Robert
Horvitz, 55, shared the prize, worth about $1 million.
Sulston, of the
Sanger Center at England’s Cambridge University, discovered that certain
cells in the developing worm are destined to die through programmed cell
death. He demonstrated the first mutations of genes that participate in that
process, the committee said. |