Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine. Nobel Prize winners in medicine and biology. Nobel Prize. Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine and Physiology

According to the website of the Nobel Committee, having studied the behavior of fruit flies in different phases of the day, researchers from the United States were able to look inside the biological clock of living organisms and explain the mechanism of their work.

Geoffrey Hall, a 72-year-old geneticist from the University of Maine, his colleague Michael Rosbash, 73, of the private Brandeis University, and Michael Young, 69, of the Rockefeller University, have figured out how plants, animals and people adapt to the change of day and night. Scientists have discovered that circadian rhythms (from the Latin circa - “around”, “around” and the Latin dies - “day”) are regulated by the so-called period genes, which encode a protein that accumulates in the cells of living organisms at night and is consumed during the day.

2017 Nobel laureates Geoffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young began researching the molecular biological nature of living organisms' internal clocks in 1984.

“The biological clock regulates behavior, hormone levels, sleep, body temperature and metabolism. Our well-being deteriorates if there is a discrepancy between the external environment and our internal biological clock - for example, when we travel across multiple time zones. Nobel laureates have found signs that a chronic mismatch between a person's lifestyle and their biological rhythm dictated by the internal clock increases the risk of various diseases, ”the Nobel Committee website says.

Top 10 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine

There, on the website of the Nobel Committee, there is a list of the ten most popular laureates in the field of physiology and medicine for the entire time that it has been awarded, that is, since 1901. This rating of Nobel Prize winners was compiled by the number of page views of the site dedicated to their discoveries.

On the tenth line- Francis Crick, British molecular biologist, who received the Nobel Prize in 1962 along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins "for their discoveries concerning molecular structure nucleic acids and their importance for the transmission of information in living systems”, in other words - for the study of DNA.

On the eighth line ranking of the most popular Nobel laureates in the field of physiology and medicine is the immunologist Karl Landsteiner, who received the award in 1930 for the discovery of human blood types, which made blood transfusion a common medical practice.

In seventh place- Chinese pharmacologist Tu Yuyu. Together with William Campbell and Satoshi Omura in 2015, she received the Nobel Prize “for discoveries in the field of new ways to treat malaria”, or rather, for the discovery of artemisinin, an annual preparation from wormwood, which helps fight this infectious disease. Note that Tu Yuyou became the first Chinese woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

In fifth place in the list of the most popular Nobel laureates is the Japanese Yoshinori Ohsumi, the winner of the award in the field of physiology and medicine in 2016. He discovered the mechanisms of autophagy.

On the fourth line- Robert Koch, German microbiologist who discovered anthrax bacillus, vibrio cholerae and tubercle bacillus. Koch received the Nobel Prize in 1905 for his research on tuberculosis.

On the third place The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is ranked by the American biologist James Dewey Watson, who received the award along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins in 1952 for discovering the structure of DNA.

Well and most popular Nobel laureate in the field of physiology and medicine turned out to be Sir Alexander Fleming, a British bacteriologist who, along with colleagues Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain, received a prize in 1945 for the discovery of penicillin, which truly changed the course of history.

In early October, the Nobel Committee summed up the work for 2016 in various areas of human activity that brought the greatest benefit and named the Nobel Prize nominees.

You can be skeptical about this award as much as you like, doubt the objectivity of the choice of laureates, question the value of the theories and merits put forward for nomination ... . All this, of course, has a place to be ... Well, tell me, what is the value of the peace prize awarded, for example, to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 ... or the similar award to American President Barack Obama for peace on the planet, which made even more noise in 2009 🙂 ?

Nobel Prizes

And this 2016 was not without criticism and discussions of the new awardees, for example, the world ambiguously accepted the award in the field of literature, which went to the American rock singer Bob Dylan for his poems to songs, and the singer himself was even more ambiguous about the award, reacting for the award after only two weeks ....

However, regardless of our philistine opinion, this high the award is considered the most prestigious award in the scientific world, has been living for more than a hundred years, has hundreds of awardees, a prize fund of millions of dollars.

The Nobel Foundation was founded in 1900 after the death of his testator Alfred Nobel- an outstanding Swedish scientist, academician, Ph.D., inventor of dynamite, humanist, peace activist and so on ...

Russia in the list of awardees 7th place, has in the entire history of awards 23 nobelists or 19 awards(there are groups). The last Russian to be awarded this high honor was Vitaly Ginzburg in 2010 for his discoveries in the field of physics.

So, the awards for 2016 are divided, the awards will be presented in Stockholm, the total size of the fund changes all the time and the size of the award changes accordingly.

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2016

Few ordinary people, far from science, delve into the essence of scientific theories and discoveries that deserve special recognition. And I'm one of those :-) . But today I want to dwell on one of the awards for this year in a little more detail. Why medicine and physiology? Yes, everything is simple, one of the most intense sections of my blog “Be healthy”, because the work of the Japanese interested me and I understood a little about its essence. I think the article will be of interest to people who adhere to healthy lifestyle life.

So, the Nobel Prize winner in the field of Physiology and Medicine for 2016 became 71 year old Japanese Yoshinori Osumi(Yoshinori Ohsumi) is a molecular biologist from Tokyo technological university. The topic of his work is “Discovery of the mechanisms of autophagy”.

autophagy in Greek, “self-eating” or “self-eating” is a mechanism for processing and utilizing unnecessary, obsolete parts of the cell, which is performed by the cell itself. Simply put, the cell eats itself. Autophagy is inherent in all living organisms, including humans.

The process itself has been known for a long time. The scientist’s research, conducted back in the 90s of the century, opened and allowed not only to understand in detail the importance of the autophagy process for many physiological processes occurring inside a living organism, in particular, when adapting to hunger, response to infection, but also to identify the genes that trigger this process.

How is the process of cleansing the body? And just like we clean up our garbage at home, only automatically: cells pack all unnecessary trash, toxins into special “containers” - autophagosomes, then move them to lysosomes. Here, unnecessary proteins and damaged intracellular elements are digested, while fuel is released, which is supplied to nourish cells and build new ones. It's that simple!

But what's most interesting about this study is that autophagy is triggered faster and more powerful when the body experiences it, and especially when it's FASTING.

The discovery of the Nobel Prize winner proves that religious fasting and even periodic, limited hunger are still useful for a living organism. Both of these processes stimulate autophagy, cleanse the body, relieve the burden on the digestive organs, and thereby save from premature aging.

Disruptions in autophagy processes lead to diseases such as Parkinson's, diabetes, and even cancer. Doctors are looking for ways to deal with them with medication. Or maybe you just need not be afraid to expose your body to health fasting, thereby stimulating the renewal processes in cells? At least occasionally...

The work of the scientist once again confirmed how amazingly subtle and clever our body is, how far not all the processes in it are known...

The well-deserved prize of eight million Swedish crowns (932 thousand US dollars) will be received by the Japanese scientist along with other awardees in Stockholm on December 10, the day of Alfred Nobel's death. And I think it's well deserved...

Were you even slightly interested? And how do you feel about such conclusions of the Japanese? Do they make you happy?

In 2017, the winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine discovered the mechanism of the biological clock, which directly affects the health of the body. Scientists have not only been able to explain how everything happens, but also to prove that the frequent failure of these rhythms leads to an increased risk of disease.

Today the site will tell not only about this important discovery, but also remember other scientists whose discoveries in medicine turned the world upside down. If before that you were not interested in the Nobel Prize, then today you will understand how its discoveries have affected the quality of your life!

2017 Nobel Prize Laureates in Medicine - what did they discover?

Geoffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young were able to explain the mechanism of the biological clock. A group of scientists found out exactly how plants, animals and people adapt to the cyclic changes of night and day.
It turned out that the so-called circadian rhythms are regulated by period genes. At night, they encode a protein in the cells, which is consumed during the day.

The biological clock is responsible for a number of processes in the body - hormone levels, metabolic processes, sleep and body temperature. If the external environment does not correspond to internal rhythms, then we get a deterioration in well-being. If this happens often, the risk of diseases increases.

The biological clock directly affects the functioning of the body. If their rhythm does not coincide with the current environment, then not only the state of health worsens, but also the risk of certain diseases increases.

Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine: Top 10 Most Important Discoveries

Medical discoveries do not just give scientists new information, they help make a person's life better, maintain his health, and help overcome diseases and epidemics. The Nobel Prize has been awarded since 1901 - and for more than a century, many discoveries have been made. On the website of the award, you can find a kind of rating of the personalities of scientists and the results of their scientific work. Of course, one cannot say that one medical discovery is less important than another.

1. Francis Creek- this British scientist received an award in 1962 for detailed research DNA structures. He was also able to reveal the significance of nucleic acids for the transmission of information from generation to generation.

3. Karl Landsteiner- an immunologist who discovered in 1930 that humanity has several blood types. This made blood transfusion a safe and common practice in medicine and saved the lives of many people.

4. Tu Yuyu- this woman in 2015 received an award for the development of new, more effective ways treatment malaria. She discovered a drug that is made from wormwood. By the way, it was Tu Youyou who became the first woman in China to receive the Nobel Prize in medicine.

5. Severo Ochoa- he received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of mechanisms biological synthesis DNA and RNA. It happened in 1959.

6. Yoshinori Ohsumi- these scientists discovered the mechanisms of autophagy. The Japanese received the award in 2016.

7. Robert Koch- probably one of the most famous Nobel Prize winners. This microbiologist in 1905 discovered tubercle bacillus, vibrio cholerae and anthrax. The discovery made it possible to begin to fight these dangerous diseases, from which many people died every year.

8. James Dewey- American biologist, who, in collaboration with two of his colleagues, discovered the structure of DNG. It happened in 1952.

9. Ivan Pavlov- the first laureate from Russia, an outstanding physiologist, who in 1904 received a prize for his revolutionary work on the physiology of digestion.

10. Alexander Fleming- this outstanding bacteriologist from Great Britain discovered penicillin. It happened in 1945 - and radically changed the course of history.

Each of these outstanding people contributed to the development of medicine. It probably cannot be measured by material goods or awarding titles. However, these Nobel Prize winners, thanks to their discoveries, will forever remain in the history of mankind!

Ivan Pavlov, Robert Koch, Ronald Ross and other scientists - they all made important discoveries in the field of medicine that helped save the lives of many people. It is thanks to their work that we now have the opportunity to receive real help in hospitals and clinics, we do not suffer from epidemics, we know how to treat various dangerous diseases.

The winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine are outstanding people whose discoveries helped save hundreds of thousands of lives. It is thanks to their efforts that we now have the opportunity to treat even the most complex diseases. The level of medicine has increased many times over in just one century, in which at least a dozen important discoveries for mankind happened. However, every scientist who has been nominated for the award already deserves respect. It is thanks to such people that we can stay healthy and full of strength for a long time! And how many important discoveries are still ahead of us!

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Its owners were a group of scientists from the United States. Michael Young, Jeffrey Hall, and Michael Rosbash received the award for discovering the molecular mechanisms that control the circadian rhythm.

According to the will of Alfred Nobel, the prize is awarded to the one "who makes an important discovery" in this field. The editors of TASS-DOSIER have prepared material on the procedure for awarding this award and its laureates.

Awarding and nominating candidates

The Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm is responsible for awarding the prize. The Assembly consists of 50 professors of the institute. Its working body is the Nobel Committee. It consists of five people elected by the assembly from among its members for three years. The Assembly meets several times a year to discuss the applicants selected by the committee, and on the first Monday in October elects the laureate by majority vote.

Scholars are eligible to nominate different countries, including members of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute and winners of the Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine and in Chemistry, who received special invitations from the Nobel Committee. You can propose candidates from September until January 31 of the following year. 361 people apply for the award in 2017.

Laureates

The prize has been awarded since 1901. The first laureate was the German doctor, microbiologist and immunologist Emil Adolf von Behring, who developed a method of immunization against diphtheria. In 1902, Ronald Ross (Great Britain), who studied malaria, received the award; in 1905 - Robert Koch (Germany), who studied the causative agents of tuberculosis; in 1923, Frederick Banting (Canada) and John McLeod (Great Britain), who discovered insulin; in 1924 - the founder of electrocardiography Willem Einthoven (Holland); in 2003 Paul Lauterbur (USA) and Peter Mansfield (UK) developed the method of magnetic resonance imaging.

According to the Nobel Committee of the Karolinska Institute, the 1945 prize awarded to Alexander Fleming, Ernest Cheyne and Howard Flory (Great Britain), who discovered penicillin, is still the most famous. Some discoveries have lost their significance over time. Among them is the lobotomy method used in the treatment of mental illness. For its development in 1949, the Portuguese Antonio Egas-Moniz received the prize.

In 2016, the prize was awarded to the Japanese biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi "for the discovery of the mechanism of autophagy" (the process of processing by the cell of unnecessary contents in it).

According to the Nobel website, today there are 211 people on the list of prize winners, including 12 women. Among the laureates are two of our compatriots: the physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1904; for his work in the field of the physiology of digestion) and the biologist and pathologist Ilya Mechnikov (1908; for the study of immunity).

Statistics

In 1901-2016, the prize in physiology or medicine was awarded 107 times (in 1915-1918, 1921, 1925, 1940-1942, the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute could not choose a laureate). The prize was shared 32 times between two laureates and 36 times between three. Average age laureates 58 years. The youngest is Canadian Frederick Banting, who received the award in 1923 at the age of 32, the oldest is 87-year-old American Francis Peyton Rose (1966).

In 2016, the Nobel Committee awarded the Physiology or Medicine Prize to Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi for discovering autophagy and deciphering its molecular mechanism. Autophagy is a process of recycling spent organelles and protein complexes; it is important not only for the economical management of the cellular economy, but also for the renewal of the cellular structure. Deciphering the biochemistry of this process and its genetic basis suggests the possibility of controlling and managing the entire process and its individual stages. And this gives researchers obvious fundamental and applied perspectives.

Science rushes forward at such an incredible pace that the non-specialist does not have time to realize the importance of the discovery, and the Nobel Prize is already awarded for it. In the 80s of the last century, in biology textbooks, in the section on the structure of the cell, one could learn, among other organelles, about lysosomes - membrane vesicles filled with enzymes inside. These enzymes are aimed at splitting various large biological molecules into smaller units (it should be noted that at that time our biology teacher did not yet know why lysosomes were needed). They were discovered by Christian de Duve, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974.

Christian de Duve and colleagues separated lysosomes and peroxisomes from other cellular organelles using a then new method - centrifugation, which allows particles to be sorted by mass. Lysosomes are now widely used in medicine. For example, targeted drug delivery to damaged cells and tissues is based on their properties: a molecular drug is placed inside the lysosome due to the difference in acidity inside and outside it, and then the lysosome, equipped with specific labels, is sent to the affected tissues.

Lysosomes are illegible by the nature of their activity - they break up any molecules and molecular complexes into their constituent parts. Narrower "specialists" are proteasomes, which are aimed only at the breakdown of proteins (see:, "Elements", 11/05/2010). Their role in the cellular economy can hardly be overestimated: they monitor the enzymes that have served their time and destroy them as needed. This period, as we know, is defined very precisely - exactly as much time as the cell performs a specific task. If the enzymes were not destroyed upon its completion, then the ongoing synthesis would be difficult to stop in time.

Proteasomes are present in all cells without exception, even in those where there are no lysosomes. The role of proteasomes and the biochemical mechanism of their work was investigated by Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They discovered that the proteasome recognizes and destroys those proteins that are labeled with the protein ubiquitin. The binding reaction with ubiquitin comes at the expense of ATP. In 2004, these three scientists received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their research on ubiquitin-dependent protein degradation. In 2010, looking through school curriculum for gifted English children, I saw a row of black dots in the picture of the structure of the cell, which were labeled as proteasomes. However, the school teacher at that school could not explain to the students what it is and what these mysterious proteasomes are for. With lysosomes in that picture, no questions arose.

Even at the beginning of the study of lysosomes, it was noticed that parts of cell organelles are enclosed inside some of them. This means that in lysosomes, not only large molecules are disassembled, but also parts of the cell itself. The process of digesting one's own cellular structures is called autophagy - that is, "eating oneself." How do parts of cell organelles get into the lysosome containing hydrolases? Back in the 80s, he began to deal with this issue, who studied the structure and functions of lysosomes and autophagosomes in mammalian cells. He and his colleagues showed that autophagosomes appear in mass in cells if they are grown on a nutrient-poor medium. In this regard, a hypothesis has arisen that autophagosomes are formed when a reserve source of nutrition is needed - proteins and fats that are part of extra organelles. How are these autophagosomes formed, are they needed as a source of additional nutrition or for other cellular purposes, how do lysosomes find them for digestion? All these questions in the early 1990s had no answers.

Taking on independent research, Osumi focused his efforts on the study of yeast autophagosomes. He reasoned that autophagy should be conservative cellular mechanism, therefore, it is more convenient to study it on simple (relatively) and convenient laboratory objects.

In yeast, autophagosomes are located inside vacuoles and then disintegrate there. Various proteinase enzymes are engaged in their utilization. If the proteinases in the cell are defective, then autophagosomes accumulate inside the vacuoles and do not dissolve. Osumi took advantage of this property to obtain a culture of yeast with an increased number of autophagosomes. He grew cultures of yeast on poor media - in this case, autophagosomes appear in abundance, delivering a food reserve to the starving cell. But his cultures used mutant cells with inactive proteinases. So, as a result, cells quickly accumulated a mass of autophagosomes in vacuoles.

Autophagosomes, as follows from his observations, are surrounded by single-layer membranes, which can contain a wide variety of contents: ribosomes, mitochondria, lipid and glycogen granules. By adding or removing protease inhibitors to wild cell cultures, one can increase or decrease the number of autophagosomes. So in these experiments it was demonstrated that these cell bodies are digested with the help of proteinase enzymes.

Very quickly, in just a year, using the random mutation method, Osumi identified 13–15 genes (APG1–15) and the corresponding protein products involved in the formation of autophagosomes (M. Tsukada, Y. Ohsumi, 1993. Isolation and characterization of autophagy-defective mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae). Among colonies of cells with defective proteinase activity, he selected under a microscope those in which there were no autophagosomes. Then, cultivating them separately, he found out which genes they had corrupted. It took his group another five years to decipher, as a first approximation, the molecular mechanism of these genes.

It was possible to find out how this cascade works, in what order and how these proteins bind to each other, so that the result is an autophagosome. By 2000, the picture of membrane formation around damaged organelles to be processed became clearer. The single lipid membrane begins to stretch around these organelles, gradually surrounding them until the ends of the membrane approach each other and fuse to form the double membrane of the autophagosome. This vesicle is then transported to the lysosome and fuses with it.

APG proteins are involved in the process of membrane formation, analogs of which Yoshinori Ohsumi and colleagues found in mammals.

Thanks to the work of Osumi, we have seen the whole process of autophagy in dynamics. The starting point of Osumi's research was the simple fact of the presence of mysterious small bodies in the cells. Now researchers have the opportunity, albeit hypothetical, to control the entire process of autophagy.

Autophagy is necessary for the normal functioning of the cell, since the cell must be able not only to renew its biochemical and architectural economy, but also to utilize the unnecessary. There are thousands of worn-out ribosomes and mitochondria, membrane proteins, spent molecular complexes in the cell - all of them need to be economically processed and put back into circulation. This is a kind of cellular recycling. This process not only provides a certain economy, but also prevents the rapid aging of the cell. Disruption of cellular autophagy in humans leads to the development of Parkinson's disease, type II diabetes, cancer, and some disorders associated with old age. Controlling the process of cellular autophagy obviously has great prospects, both in fundamental and applied terms.