"for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase"
Three Americans, Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak won the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that has inspired new lines of research into cancer.
The trio solved the mystery of how chromosomes, the rod-like structures that carry DNA, protect themselves from degrading when cells divide.
The Nobel citation said the laureates found the solution in the ends of the chromosomes - features called telomeres that are often compared to the plastic tips at the end of shoe laces that keep those laces from unraveling.
Blackburn and Greider discovered the enzyme that builds telomeres - telomerase - and the mechanism by which it adds DNA to the tips of chromosomes to replace genetic material that has eroded away.
This work set the stage for research suggesting that cancer cells use telomerase to sustain their uncontrolled growth. Scientists are studying whether drugs that block the enzyme can fight the disease. In addition, scientists believe that the DNA erosion the enzyme repairs might play a role in some illnesses.
The discoveries by Blackburn, Greider and Szostak have added a new dimension to the understanding of the cell, shed light on disease mechanisms, and stimulated the development of potential new therapies.
Blackburn is a professor of biology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Greider is a professor in the department of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Funding for this kind of curiosity-driven science is really important. Disease-oriented research isn't the only way to reach the answer, but both together are synergistic.
When this work was started, they were really just interested in the very basic question about DNA replication, how the ends of chromosomes are maintained. At the time they had no idea there would be all these later implications.
Since then it has become apparent that the process of maintaining the ends of DNA molecules is very important and plays an important role in cancer and in aging, which are really still being fully worked out.
Telomerase is very active in many cancer cells and if you turn it off or destroy the cells which have this high activity, you could be able to treat cancer.
Some inherited diseases are now known to be caused by telomerase defects, including certain forms of congenital aplastic anemia, in which insufficient cell divisions in the stem cells of the bone marrow lead to severe anemia. Certain inherited diseases of the skin and the lungs are also caused by telomerase defects.
http://www.nobelprize.org