Every year, a prestigious prize is given to people who provide a reason for change, a new invention or a new discovery. The Nobel Prize Laureates in 2013 in the field of physiology, and medicine was given to three individuals. The Laureates were James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof. The three investigators revealed that there is the machinery that controls how cells transport major molecules in a cargo system which ends up delivering them to the right place at the right time in the body. This is unbelievable since, there was a lot of skepticism concerning the research pursued by the scientists. The concept of how our body acts like a machine in which we respond to our senses is truly breath taking.
James E. Rothman was born on the 3rd of November 1950 in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Rothman is a professor at Yale School of Medicine for the Cell Biology department. Rothman was given the Nobel Prize for vesicle trafficking in the human body. In the late 1980s and 1990s Rothman began to study the transportation of mammalian cells. He discovered that there was “a protein complex allows vesicles to dock and fuse with their target membranes” (Altman). After his investigation he determined that the proteins on the vesicles and target membranes bind together completely. When Rothman was conducting his investigation he noticed the combination of the proteins which led him to conduce that the relation to allow the cell to reach to a particular location at a particular time was beyond belief.
Similarly, Randy W. Schekman is a researcher at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was born on the 30th of December 1948 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Professor Schekman began his studies in the 1970s. He developed a model system which w...
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...nto the new world of medicine. The basic function of a cell has gained a new function which can provide a pathway of exploring ideas and concepts relating to the mutation of cells. If we are able to determine the specific time and place a cell is transported then, we can surely mutate the cell to prevent the spread of terminal diseases. The Nobel Prize winners truly deserve this prestigious award. After decades of intensive, tedious and tiresome studying they were able to uncover a mystery of the human body which now opens many doors to new studies that would be beneficial to society.
Works Cited
Altman, Lawrence K. “For 3 Nobel Winners, a Molecular Mystery Solved.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 7 Oct. 2013. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.
“The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013.” The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2013.
Jared Diamond is a professor of geography at UCLA. He has a PhD in physiology and has spent his time since then researching molecular physiology and evolutio...
In this case, the reward for winning the “competition” is so significant that better opportunities are overlooked and some are left without the aid they need. When Watson and Crick ask Rosalind Franklin’s opinion on their model of DNA, the result they are looking for is far from what they had hoped: “Rosy did not give a hoot about the priority of...
Henrietta Lacks was a poor woman with middle school education have made the greatest medical contributions. Henrietta lacks had made one of the greatest medical contribution because her cells were growing and dividing rapidly. Henrietta Lacks cells were taken from a cervical-cancer biopsy. The HeLa cells (Henrietta Lacks cells) help accomplish amazing things in the medical fields. The HeLa cells had helped accomplish advancement in medicine. The Hela cells that were taken from her tumor when she was undergoing surgery have been accountable of the medical advances. The polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping and IVF were the advancement in medicine. These health breakthroughs were possible because of Henrietta Lacks. The scientists
In his book, Meyers recounts the stories of numerous scientists and researchers who discovered something magnificent when merely looking for something else. This is not to say that all of the scientists did something wrong in their research, but Meyers argues that the beauty of serendipity in medical discoveries is that no matter where the discoveries come from or how they come about, all it takes is someone intelligent and creative enough to understand the true application of the discovery. Meyers writes about four different categories of discoveries in his book. The first category is full of historical medical discoveries mostly focusing on diseases and antibiotics. The second and most relevant category is about the numerous advancements in cancer treatment. The third category focuses on one major organ: the heart which requires major focus in modern American healthcare. The fourth and last category discusses different psychotropic drugs that have been discovered as well as their uses in medicine. One of the most interesting discoveries that Meyers discusses is written within the second
In 1953, Francis Crick bragged to his fellow colleagues from the Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge), claiming that he and his American partner, James Watson, had “discovered the secret of life.” The claim, made in a bar over a glass of alcohol, was not unusual from the pair. In fact, workers in the Cavendish often found Crick to be tactless, arrogant and noisy; one even went so far as to comment that he had “never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood.” Yet, a little over a century later, it is undeniable that Crick’s statement is true. Using information derived from a number of other scientists, primarily Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins of King’s College, the duo solved a puzzle that had plagued biologists for decades; they created a three-dimensional model of the DNA helix.
As a cancer clinic volunteer, the daughter of an oncologist, the friend of a breast cancer survivor, and a biological enthusiast, I find the medical field of cancer and its impacts on health fascinating. The human body is so complex, yet, so fragile at the same time and I hope that through this exploration, I will witness how mathematics plays a role in science and more specifically physiology.
Engel, G. L. (1977). The need for a new medical model: a challenge for biomedicine. Science, 196(4286), 129–136.
The reason I wrote this report is that I wanted to find out where Nobel came from and what forces played a role in his creation of such a destructive power. Also, I am very curious what caused his shift in perspective to create a prize to better society. Over the years there have been many winners of the 5 Nobel prizes, and I intend to investigate some of their individual contributions to help determine criteria for winning the prizes.
Engel, G. L. (1977). A Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Biomedicine. Science , 196, 129-136.
He went on to discover the epidermal growth factor as well. Stanley and Rita won the shared Nobel Prize for physiology/medicine in 1986, as well as sharing the Louisa Gross Horowitz Prize form Columbia University in 1983. He also won the National Medal of Science in 1986 and his research has been vital for the understanding of cancer cell development. He is still alive to this day, at age 92 as of 17 November this year.Having been linked to Down Syndrome, the NGF is really far more important than you
Thorsen, C. A., Koven, A., Pattee, D., Watson, D. C., & Collier, A. (2011). The story of
In Pauling’s own words he was “…a physicist with an interest in chemistry. [His] scientific work, however, has not been restricted to chemistry and physics, but has extended over X-ray crystallography, mineralogy, biochemistry, nuclear science, genetics, and molecular biology; also nutrition and various aspects of research in medicine, such as serology, immunology, and psychiatry” (Marinacci Ed., 1995, p. 26). Pauling received two Nobel Prizes acknowledging his contributions, one in Chemistry in 1954 and one for Peace in 1962.
Frederick G. Banting was a medical doctor most well known for finding the lifelong treatment for diabetes, which prior to his incredible discovery was known as a death sentence to anyone who was diagnosed with it. Because his discovery left such a mark on the world, Banting received many awards throughout his lifetime, his biggest accomplishment being that he received a Nobel Prize in 1923, in Physiology or Medicine. Although he was awarded a great amount of prize money for his accomplishments, his assistant Charles Best was awarded none so Banting showed his massive generosity by splitting his prize money in half and sharing it with him.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls this is never before news! It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you a once in a life time interview with one of the biggest mafia families out here in the great Big Apple (a.k.a New York), the Corleone family. We have taken interviews given to some of the family members throughout the years, and put together a little project. It gives me great pleasure to release this astonishing interview into the science world, which will help scientist and the young children on how to remember the cell and its organelles. Cells are important because we humans are made up of cells, without cells we wouldn’t be anything and wouldn’t be able to function. By telling the members of the Corleone family that these interviews were for science, they graciously accepted my offer and helped me out on how to get a better grasp on the cell and its organelles.
My Honors research is a composite of work done both here at Howard University and at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Here on campus, I am in the laboratory of Dr. Mark Burke, an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics of Howard University’s College of Medicine. I began in the lab at the beginning of this year, where my primary responsibility was to learn and develop the relevant skills and techniques to succeed within his laboratory. These included: primate brain tissue processing (sectioning and slide mounting/dehydration), immunohistochemistry, tissue staining and keeping an updated lab notebook. In the spring of this year, I was accepted into the Amgen Scholars Program, which gave me the opportunity to conduct my own research project at the National Institutes of Health over the summer. I was in the lab of Dr. Hans Ackerman in the Sickle Cell Branch of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and the nature of my project focused on the expression of a tight junction protein known as