Nobel Rhythms
Nobel Prize in Medicine to be awarded for biological clock
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for their research on the molecular mechanisms responsible for circadian rhythms – a biological clock with a period of 24 hours. This is reported by Reuters.
Circadian rhythms are cycles of various biological processes associated with the change of day and night. In 1984, Hall and Rosbash, who were working at Brandeis University in Boston at the time, as well as Young from Rockefeller University in New York, working with fruit flies, identified the period gene that sets the course of the biological clock. It encodes the protein PER, which accumulates in the body during the night and is destroyed during the day. Thus, the protein level oscillates during a 24-hour cycle.
Scientists have suggested that PER inhibits the activity of the period gene, forming a negative feedback. A second gene, timeless, encoding the TIM protein, is involved in this mechanism. The latter binds to PER, and the resulting complex enters the cell nucleus, where it blocks the corresponding DNA. The protein DBT, which is encoded by the doubletime gene discovered by Michael Young, is responsible for the degradation of PER.
According to tradition, an official award ceremony will be held in Stockholm on December 10, 2017, the day of Alfred Nobel's death. The prize will be presented to the laureates by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. The amount of monetary remuneration this year will be about one million dollars (for all winners of the prize in medicine and physiology).
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02.10.2017