What contribution have the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry had to the field of Cellular Engineering?It may appear at first glance that the Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine might have had more impact on the Cellular Engineering field that those in the noble (excuse the pun) field of Chemistry. Recent prizes that come to mind include the 2001 prize in awarded to Leland Hartwell, Tim Hunt and Paul Nurse for their discoveries of "key regulators of the cell cycle", an area that has obvious significance to quantitative studies of cell functions. Another is the prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1974, awarded jointly to Albert Claude, Christian de Duve and George Palade for their discoveries concerning "the structural and functional organization of the cell". The examples are really too numerous to compile in this short article. Suffice to say that the explosion in our knowledge of cell structure and function, including signalling mechanisms in many cells and tissues, has come to us in part from those eminent recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Chemistry however has given us fundamental knowledge of the building blocks of life and some of the processes that drive our cell functions. A large proportion of the Nobel awards in chemistry go to biochemists, with three out of the past ten years alone directly relating to biochemistry of cells and proteins (2003, 2002 and 1997). Most recently, the prize in 2003 was awarded to two eminent scientists, Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon for "discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes". Their discoveries not only clarified how ions and water move through the cell membrane, they contributed fundamental parameters enabling us to model cell membrane function in diverse tissues and organs ranging from nerves to the kidneys. In 1997, half of the prize was awarded to Paul Boyer and John Walker for "their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)" and the other half to Jens Skou for discovery of an "ion-transporting enzyme, Na +, K + -ATPase". Discoveries relating to ATP, that all important energy carrier in all plant and animal cells, have had a rich history in the Nobel prizes. The prize in 1997 was one of the latest steps towards the fascinating field of molecular motors, a topic of considerable interest to cellular engineers worldwide. Finally, those earlier greats of the Chemistry prizes, Svante Arrhenius (1903), Marie Curie (1911), Walther Nernst (1920), Irving Langmuir (1932) and Linus Pauling (1954) (to name just a few) should not go unmentioned for providing us with knowledge critical to our understanding of many atomic and molecular properties and phenomena, essential for describing, modelling and quantifying the complex functions and interactions of cells, tissues, organs and living organisms. For more info on the Nobel prizes in all branches go to: http://www.nobel.se
Laura Poole-Warren
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