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| The portraits of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in Stockholm on Wednesday: Tomas Lindahl, Paul L. Modrich and Aziz Sancar Credit Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Chemistry Nobel honors studies of DNA repair mechanisms
The 2015 #NobelPrize in chemistry was awarded to three researchers that determined how the cell works to protect genetic material in the face of environmental damages or DNA-copying errors.
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| Specialized proteins (blue and yellow) can repair damaged DNA. The 2015 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three researchers who determined how the cell works to protect genetic material in the face of environmental damages or DNA-copying errors. |
From one cell to another, from one generation to the next. The genetic information that governs how
human beings are shaped has flowed through our bodies for hundreds of thousands of years. It is
constantly subjected to assaults from the environment, yet it remains surprisingly intact. Tomas
Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 for having
mapped and explained how the cell repairs its DNA and safeguards the genetic information.
They are awarded 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.
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 and aging.
Three molecular detectives have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar will share the award for their studies in DNA repair, which have revealed some of the mechanisms behind both cancer development and aging. Dr. Lindahl found how cells repair damaged DNA during the cell cycle, Dr. Modrich showed how cells fix DNA replication errors during cell division, and Dr. Sancar mapped how cells repair UV damage to DNA. Life as we know it today is totally dependent on the mechanisms revealed in molecular detail by these chemistry laureates, the committee said.
DNA encodes the instructions for building and conducting life. But it’s a fragile molecule that can be altered or damaged by sunlight, toxic chemicals, radiation or even normal chemical reactions inside the cell.
Lindahl, of the Francis Crick Institute in England, determined that DNA isn’t actually very stable: It can fall apart on its own, without injury. He described how a cell can remove and replace damaged genetic building blocks.
Sometimes, the cell makes mistakes while copying DNA. Modrich’s work revealed how a cell can correct these genetic errors by replacing DNA’s individual constituents. Modrich is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Duke University.
Sancar, of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, uncovered which proteins are responsible for patching DNA up after ultraviolet damage, and how they work.
Tomas Lindahl, Paul L. Modrich and Aziz Sancar were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for having mapped and explained how the cell repairs its DNA and safeguards its genetic information.
Dr. Lindahl, of the Francis Crick Institute in London, was honored for his discoveries on base excision repair — the cellular mechanism that repairs damaged DNA during the cell cycle. Dr. Modrich, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine, was recognized for showing how cells correct errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division. Dr. Sancar, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was cited for mapping the mechanism cells use to repair ultraviolet damage to DNA.
The three winners joined the 169 laureates, including Ernest Rutherford, Marie Curie and Linus Pauling, who have been honored with the prize since 1901. (One of them, Frederick Sanger, won twice.)
This week’s three Nobel Prizes reflect the globalization of science, which the United States often dominated in the last century. The award in medicine or physiology on Monday went to citizens of China and Japan, as well as an American. The physics prize on Tuesday went to experts in Japan and Canada.
Wednesday’s prize in chemistry — Dr. Sancar was born in Turkey, and Dr. Lindahl is the 29th native of Sweden to be named a Nobel laureate — reflects the globalization trend, while underscoring the centrality of American research institutions, where two of the three winners work.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/science
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http://www.nobelprize.org
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