Nobels 2013: Physiology or Medicine : Nature News Blog

Nobels 2013: Physiology or Medicine : Nature News Blog:

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Südhof.

The three take the prize for “their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells”, the Nobel Assembly says. Vesicles are structures that can transport molecules around cells and deliver them to where they are required.

Schekman, of the University of California, Berkeley, identified genes essential to vesicle traffic, and Rothman, of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, worked out how vesicles transfer their cargo. Südhof, now based at Stanford University in California, finished the picture by detailing how vesicles are signalled to release their cargo, the prize committee reports.

“Through their discoveries, Rothman, Schekman and Südhof have revealed the exquisitely precise control system for the transport and delivery of cellular cargo. Disturbances in this system have deleterious effects and contribute to conditions such as neurological diseases, diabetes and immunological disorders,” says the Nobel statement on the award.