The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009
Born: 15 April 1961, San Diego, CA, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
Prize motivation: “for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase”
Work
An organism’s genes are stored within DNA molecules, which are found in chromosomes inside its cells’ nuclei. When a cell divides, it is important that its chromosomes are copied in full, and that they are not damaged. At each end of a chromosome lies a kind of cap or telomere, as it is known, which protects it. After Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that telomeres have a particular DNA that prevents chromosomes from being broken down, Carol Greider, together with Blackburn, also discovered telomerase in 1984, which produces the telomeres’ DNA.
