The Nobel Prizes so far, and their significance.

Written October 8, 2008 in Personal

Jump to comments

Up till today, the Nobel Prizes for Medicine/Physiology, Physics and Chemistry has been announced, but to many layman, their significance may not be that obvious. Lets see how I can help, no promises it’ll be absolutely accurate, but I try my best. You can find out more about this year’s prizes at the Nobel Prize website. 

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008

"for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer" – Harald zur Hausen

"for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus" – Françoise Barré-Sinoussi & Luc Montagnier

The importance of virus research has been obviously highlighted here by the prize committee. Viruses are one of the simplest disease causing agents around, but understanding them has been a big issue – mainly because they aren’t really living.

The discovery of HPV causing cancer broke ground because he broke ranks with traditionalists who believed that this wasn’t possible. His research into this probably saved thousands of lives over the past decade.

HIV is one of the world’s possible endemics in the future, with no cure and vaccine in sight. The discovery allowed for researchers to begin this quest, which was followed by the understanding of the HIV life cycle and how to possibly disrupt this horrible virus.

 

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2008

"for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" – Yoichiro Nambu

"for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature" – Makoto Kobayashi Toshihide Maskawa

With CERN’s  unveiling of LHC a few weeks ago, it was no surprise that this year’s Physics prizes went to particle physics related topics. What might have been surprising was the fact that it was the Japanese that grabbed this, not the Europeans nor the Americans.

In short, both discoveries are very important to the development of the Standard Model in Particle Physics. Broken symmetry basically explained the formation of the universe, because if symmetry was not spontaneously broken, antimatter would have combined to matter to form nothingness immediately after the Big Bang. they postulated (and was later proved to be correct in experiments) that under certain conditions symmetry was broken, resulting in the lopsided development of matter which forms our universe.

 

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2008

"for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP" – Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, Roger Y. Tsien

The discovery of GFP revolutionised the way we observe processes occuring in cells. These proteins which glow under certain conditions are now used in many (and many) different ways to tag proteins in cells. This glowing marker allows them to watch the movements, positions and interactions of the tagged proteins. Understanding protein behaviour is a key step to combating diseases and understanding cellular behaviour. Because of the molecular nature of proteins, they could never have been observed before this discovery.

 I hope this has allowed someone out there to understand the importance of these discoveries. Have a good week ahead.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

If you enjoy the content, consider subscribing to the feed(s).

Subscribe to Entries RSS Feed Entries RSS
Subscribe to Comments RSS Feed Comments RSS

«
»

Similar posts:

  1. "Geek Talk 101 – LHCb" on September 7, 2008
  2. "Nobel prize week!" on October 6, 2008
  3. "Alot like love." on May 19, 2006
  4. "The state of Singapore football" on September 11, 2009
  5. "Learning to treat people right." on December 12, 2009

1 comment on ' The Nobel Prizes so far, and their significance. '

  1. timing of this is perfect. we just started this week of lectures on cervical cancer and HPV and next week’s PBL is on HIV.=p we should watch nobel prize ceremony for lectures. lala.

      Written by babyangel on October 09, 2008 at 2:17pm

Leave a comment