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Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to light pioneers
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Brumfiel, Geoff |
| Copyright Year | 2009 |
| Abstract | They worked out that telomerase provides a platform enabling DNA polymerases to copy the entire length of the chromosome without missing the ends. Greider and Blackburn also showed that telomerase contains a key RNA sequence that acts as a template for the telomere DNA, which attracts proteins to form a protective cap around the ends of the DNA strands. Telomeres themselves shorten with repeated cell division, making up a key part of the cell’s ageing mechanism. Low telomerase activity and telomere shortening speed up ageing, whereas incessantly dividing cancer cells often have high telomerase activity and maintain their telo mere length. Cancer therapies directed against telomerase are now being tested in clinical trials. But there is still a lot of basic biology to discover — such as how telomerase activity is regulated at individual telomeres, and how telomeres manage to avoid the attentions of DNA repair enzymes which seek out breaks in DNA and restitch the torn ends. Blackburn and Greider become only the ninth and tenth female scientists to win the physiology or medicine prize since it was first awarded in 1901, and it is the first time that two women have been recognized in a single prize. Indeed, telomere research is unusually dominated by women. “It is hard to find a male among us,” says David Shore, a cell biologist at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. “And two main reasons are Liz and Carol — they created the field and have been role models.” Blackburn has also been involved in the politics of science, serving on the US President’s Council on Bioethics from 2002 until she was dropped in 2004 after criticizing the restrictions on human embryonic stem-cell research imposed by then President George W. Bush. Lea Harrington, Greider’s first graduate student, who is now at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh, UK, says that her four years in Greider’s laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, were “electric. We all realized what an exciting time it was — so many questions being answered about the composition of telomerase, how it worked and its relevance to human biology.” ■ |
| Starting Page | 707 |
| Ending Page | 707 |
| Page Count | 1 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1038/461707a |
| PubMed reference number | 19812643 |
| Journal | Medline |
| Volume Number | 461 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.natureasia.com/static/ja-jp/ndigest/pdf/v6/n11/ndigest.2009.091107.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1038/461707a |
| Journal | Nature |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
