2004 Chemistry Nobel Price Winners
Irwin Rose, Avram Hershko, Aaron Ciechanover
Irwin Rose
- Died June 2, 2015
-University of Chicago (Bachelor of Science and PhD in Biochemistry)
-Professor at UC Irvine School of Medicine
-Field: Biochemistry
-Irwin's favorite sport was handball, a game played between walls in an apartment
Avram Hershko
-Hebrew University - Hadassah Medical School
-Working at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
-Field: Biochemistry and chemistry
-Hershko's family escaped the Holocaust as they were rescued by the Soviets while headed to Auschwitz
Aaron Ciechanover
-Graduate from Hadassah Medical School, doctorate in biochemistry from Technion- Israel Institute of Technology
-Working at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
-Field: Biochemistry
-Ciechanover was born in Haifa, British Protectorate of Palestine (Israel), a month before it became recognized by the United Nations as an independent country. His parents moved from Poland to the British territory in the mid-1920.
Scientific Method
-Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover worked in the lab with Irwin Rose at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
-For many years they tried to reproduce protein without cells.
-After having no success without cells, the scientists tried to study how a cell can regulate the presence of a certain protein by making unwanted proteins with something called ubiquitin.
-Ubiquitin is a chemical compound forms very stable bonds with various proteins.
-Proteins are broken down in detail and when they are sent to be broken down they are labeled with ubiquitin.
-Cells label the proteins that need to be broken down with ubiquitin.
-They learned how a cell controls a number of important biochemical processes.
Why Does This Matter?
-Cervical cancer and cystic fibrosis are two examples of illness from the failure of cell degradation.
-Knowledge of ubiquitin labelled protein degradation allows scientists to make drugs against these diseases and many others.
-Mainly built on already known knowledge.
-In the future, this information will continue to help fight life threatening diseases such as cancer.
Citations
<https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2004/advanced-chemistryprize2004.pdf …>
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2004/hershko-bio.html …>