And the Nobel in...

[rayndeon]

Physiology or Medicine is awarded to Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for work in RNA intereference - "gene silencing" by dsRNA - double-stranded RNA (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2006/)


'RNA interference' scoops Nobel prize for Medicine

12:00 02 October 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Gaia Vince

Two US scientists won the Nobel prize for Medicine on Monday for their discovery of RNA interference – pioneering work that has revolutionised the field of molecular biology and is leading to powerful genetic medicines.

Andrew Fire at Stanford University in California, and Craig Mello at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester, each received a gold medal and will share 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.37 million).

The pair "discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information", the Nobel prize jury said.

“It must be the quickest Nobel prize in terms of time from findings to award,” says Nick Hastie, director of the Human Genetics Unit at the Medical Research Council, UK.

Hastie says their award was widely expected and highly deserved: “Their findings have led to an enormous scientific revolution – they have opened up a whole new area of biology with great medical application.”

Gene silencing

In 1997, the Fire-Mello team discovered that they were able to “silence” certain genes in a cell's DNA by using two strands of RNA molecules. This prevented the genes from being expressed.

Dubbed RNA interference (RNAi), the finding has become an extremely useful research tool, because it allows genetic researchers to “knock-out” specific genes, observe the consequent disruptions, and so determine exactly what the gene does.

It is being used as a genome-wide tool, to search thousands of genes in a cell and screen for their function. The technique has already revealed genes responsible for muscle problems and diabetes,” Hastie says.

A byproduct of the discovery of RNAi was the finding that although cells in the human body only contain one strand of RNA, they do have micro-RNA – tiny sections of RNA that can act a little like double-stranded RNA and also silence the activity of certain genes. Experts believe the body uses micro-RNA in its immune response.

In 2004, it was discovered that a mutation in one of these micro-RNAs caused diabetes, (see Bits of RNA wield power over genes (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18424731.800-bits-of-rna-wield-power-over-genes.html)).
Group effort

Researchers are using RNAi and micro-RNA in drug development, hoping that by shutting down genes that cause disease they will be able to cure diseases such as cancer and HIV.

“I am very honoured that our work has received such positive attention,” said Fire in a statement. “Science is a group effort. Please recognise that the recent progress in the field of RNA-based gene silencing has involved original scientific inquiry from research groups around the world."

He added: "Any prize recognition should go to the many scientists who have made individual contributions, and to the spirit of scientific community that has allowed information and ideas to flow freely.”

The Medicine prize is the first of this week's coveted Nobel honours. The Physics prize will be announced on Tuesday and Chemistry on Wednesday.

Source (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn10203-rna-interference-scoops-nobel-prize-for-medicine.html)

[sailornyanko]

Sweet, last year was the H. pylori discovery (quite a revolution in Medicine considering what a pain it is to artificially grow that bacteria), the year before that was MRI imaging and this year is a Genetics (My favorite field) related discovery.

What's next? Chimeras?

[Neo0tak0n]

i have a professor who just helped publish "Engineering Broad Root-Knot Resistance in Transgenic Plants by RNAi Silencing of a Conserved and Essential Root-Knot Nematode Parasitism Gene" which basically has them using RNA interference to screw up nematodes so they can't infect plants.

[master terrence]

That'll be great, a way to silence genes that cause disease. If it can silence genes, maybe it can prevent babies with Cystic Fibrosis.

Alot of possibilities here.

The guy does some interesting expirements.

I was reading about something similar to what Neo0tak0n posted on the stanford site (it was based on that model). They want to change the response of cells to pathogens by injecting RNA/DNA into the cell. They put DNA/RNA into the cell, similar to what was in the cell already and it stopped the growth (which I would not think of... ofcourse I wouldn't :lol: ). Adding more DNA/RNA stopped growth. I can see it being used to cut down tumor growth. Very Nobel worthy (not that what I say matters -_-; )

[rayndeon]

Physics awarded to John C. Mather and George F. Smoot for discovering the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation". (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2006/)


Big bang theorists scoop Nobel prize for physics

12:50 03 October 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Amarendra Swarup and AFP

The 2006 Nobel prize for physics has been awarded to John Mather and George Smoot for their contribution to the big bang theory of the origin of the universe.

The pair were honoured for "their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation", the jury said.

According to the big bang theory, the cosmos was formed from a cataclysmic explosion that happened about 13.7 billion years ago. The timescale and geometry are measurable by shockwaves called cosmic microwave background (CMB) that continues to wash over us.

Dubbed the “afterglow of creation", the CMB is the earliest light in the universe. It is a faint aura of primordial radiation that comes to us directly from the early universe, just 380,000 years after the big bang. While it is spread very uniformly in the sky, scientists have observed tiny variations in the temperature and polarisation of the radiation, which they believe will reveal vital details about the size, matter content, age, geometry and fate of our universe.

These variations are also believed to contain information about the earliest moments of the universe, when it was rapidly expanding faster than light in a dizzying process known as inflation.

Cosmological breakthrough

Mather, 60, is an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and Smoot, 61, is a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley, both in the US.

The pair worked with the COBE satellite launched by NASA in 1989, and the results of their research added weight to the big bang scenario, since this is the only scenario that predicts the kind of cosmic microwave background radiation measured by COBE.

Smoot’s announcement in 1992 that his team had observed the long-sought variations in the CMB – and therefore, in the early universe – shook the scientific community. Called "the discovery of the century, if not of all time", by Stephen Hawking, the discovery of these ripples and wrinkles in the very fabric of space-time are believed to be the primordial seeds of modern-day structures in our universe such as galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and so on.

"These measurements also marked the inception of cosmology as a precise science," the Nobel jury said.

Dark matters

Mather coordinated the entire process and had responsibility for the experiment that revealed the blackbody form of the microwave background radiation measured by COBE. Smoot meanwhile had the main responsibility for measuring the small variations in the temperature of the radiation.

Since then, NASA has launched another probe, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which is examining these minute variations in the CMB in even greater detail and has provided strong evidence for a universe dominated by mysterious dark matter and dark energy.

Other cosmologists have applauded the award. "Although COBE was a team effort and the CMB has been more fully elucidated by later experiments, Mather and Smoot are undoubtedly leading figures," says Martin Rees, president of the UK's Royal Society and the Astronomer Royal of England. "Had these fluctuations not been there, it would have been hard to account for the universe's present structured state. Later experiments have refined this data, but the best measurement of the spectrum is still from COBE."

This is not the first time work in the field has been rewarded by the Nobel committee. The 1978 Nobel prize for physics was awarded to Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson for detecting the CMB, back in 1965.

The 2006 laureates will each receive a gold medal and a diploma and will share a cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.37 million dollars) at the formal prize ceremony held, as tradition dictates, on December 10. It is the anniversary of the death of the prize's creator Alfred Nobel, in 1896.

Source (http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn10216-big-bang-theorists-scoop-nobel-prize-for-physics.html)

[rayndeon]

Sweet, last year was the H. pylori discovery (quite a revolution in Medicine considering what a pain it is to artificially grow that bacteria), the year before that was MRI imaging and this year is a Genetics (My favorite field) related discovery.

What's next? Chimeras?

Chimeras? Maybe.

i have a professor who just helped publish "Engineering Broad Root-Knot Resistance in Transgenic Plants by RNAi Silencing of a Conserved and Essential Root-Knot Nematode Parasitism Gene" which basically has them using RNA interference to screw up nematodes so they can't infect plants.

Cool. I found it at PNAS and it looks like an interesting paper - I'm reading it right now.

That'll be great, a way to silence genes that cause disease. If it can silence genes, maybe it can prevent babies with Cystic Fibrosis.

Yup. In fact there was a recent study done on just this. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060629230846.htm)

Here's the abstract on the paper (http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/abstract/281/25/17369)

Alot of possibilities here.

Definitely. The field is exploding. For example, I went on PubMed. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed) Enter a search string "(RNAi OR siRNA OR miRNA) NOT review", you come out with about 12427 primary research articles related in some way to RNA interference. This is amazing especially considering that the field has only been in existence for about 8 years.

The guy does some interesting expirements.

Yeah.

I was reading about something similar to what Neo0tak0n posted on the stanford site (it was based on that model). They want to change the response of cells to pathogens by injecting RNA/DNA into the cell. They put DNA/RNA into the cell, similar to what was in the cell already and it stopped the growth (which I would not think of... ofcourse I wouldn't :lol: ). Adding more DNA/RNA stopped growth. I can see it being used to cut down tumor growth. Very Nobel worthy (not that what I say matters -_-; )

Sounds awesome. Do you have a reference for that?

[Neo0tak0n]

Cool. I found it at PNAS and it looks like an interesting paper - I'm reading it right now.

nc state botany department woot woot

[master terrence]

Sounds awesome. Do you have a reference for that?

My source is Fire's Stanford site -_-;

http://genome-www.stanford.edu/group/fire/

[Rain]

Gene Silencing is a revolutionary medical breakthrough in the molecular biology field since it would be a vital tool in masking certain defective, disease-causing, and/or mutated genes.

Anyway, this is awesome news to me considering genetics is my favorite biological science.

On a sidenote: "Fire-Mello" team? What a mellotastic name. Damn, they're on fire. :lol:

[rayndeon]

Chemistry goes to Roger D. Kornberg for his work on the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription - how RNA results from DNA. (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2006/)


Chemist's Nobel prize for gene-reading breakthrough

18:09 04 October 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Andy Coghlan

A chemist who has spent 20 years unravelling the process by which genes are “read” was today awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry.

Through his detailed studies of the underlying chemistry, Roger Kornberg of Stanford University in California, US, deepened understanding of the first, vital step of gene reading, called transcription.

“I’m simply stunned, there’s no other words,” said Kornberg after receiving the call at 0230 this morning.

Kornberg’s father, Arthur, won the Nobel prize for medicine in 1959 for his work showing how DNA is copied when cells multiply.

Transcription is the mechanism by which the DNA of a gene is copied into a single strand of genetic material called messenger RNA (mRNA). It is one of the steps in the process by which the cells make proteins from DNA.

“If the secret of life could be likened to a machine, the process of transcription would be a central cog in the machinery that drives all others,” says Peter Fraser of the Babraham Institute in Cambridge and senior fellow of the UK Medical Research Council. “Kornberg has given us an extraordinarily detailed view of this machine, which is essential for all life.”

Genetic recipe

In the process itself, the mRNA’s “photocopy” of the original gene is transported out of the cell nucleus into another part of the cell called the ribosome. Here, the mRNA serves as the recipe for making the protein for which the original gene codes.

When the process goes wrong, it can result in a multitude of diseases and abnormalities, from cancer and birth defects to diabetes and inflammation. So, by understanding the process at a more detailed level, researchers hope to develop new treatments for disease.

Kornberg has done much to show how the process is more complicated in advanced “eukaryotic” organisms with a well-defined nucleus, than it is in simpler life forms, such as bacteria.

His key contribution, in 2001, was to demonstrate the chemical structure of RNA polymerase II, the key enzyme at the heart of transcription.

Through detailed investigations of the structure of yeast RNA polymerase II, Kornberg showed how the gene to be transcribed is fed like ticker tape into the enzyme, emerging the other side with a growing strand of mRNA attached.

Since then, he and his colleagues have unravelled structures of other components of the process, such as the method by which strands of DNA and mRNA are unzipped to free the mRNA strand.

Mediated process

They have also probed the molecular details of other components vital for the process, such as the transcription “factors” which serve as switches to activate a particular gene.

Further studies in 2004 showed how the nucleotide base units from which mRNA is built are fed into the enzyme one by one to assemble the mRNA strand.

More recently, Kornberg’s lab has been unpicking the process by which a component in the process, called “Mediator”, serves as an exchange, telling RNA polymerase II which genes to transcribe.

Cash prize

“These are much the largest structures ever to have been resolved at this level of detail,” says Julian Downward, associate director of Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute. “The award of the Nobel prize is a very fitting reward for this immensely important work.”

The ultimate prize is to establish in fine detail how each and every gene is controlled and regulated, and how the process can be corrected through new medical treatments when it goes awry and causes disease.

Kornberg is the sole recipient of the chemistry prize, which is worth 10 million Swedish krona ($1.37 million).

Source (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10222-chemists-nobel-prize-for-genereading-breakthrough.html)

[rayndeon]

nc state botany department woot woot

Yup. Pretty amazing study.

My source is Fire's Stanford site -_-;

http://genome-www.stanford.edu/group/fire/

Thanks.

Gene Silencing is a revolutionary medical breakthrough in the molecular biology field since it would be a vital tool in masking certain defective, disease-causing, and/or mutated genes.

Anyway, this is awesome news to me considering genetics is my favorite biological science.

On a sidenote: "Fire-Mello" team? What a mellotastic name. Damn, they're on fire. :lol:

Mello as in jello? (Yes, it's corny)

Molecular biology must be having a field day. First, RNA interference. Now, eukaryotic transcription.

[sailornyanko]

W00t for genetics! Maybe next year the guy that discovered the retro viral DNA coding gene will get his prize.

Hrm.. is it a complot that so far all Nobel prize winners this year are Americans?

[soulreaper]

I'm very excited about that first one. Forget about making artificial big bangs, THIS is the kind of studying that should be in the spotlight.

[master terrence]

wondering about HIV?

I found this helpful:

http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/06_02/hiv.shtml

By silencing the main structural protein of HIV and silencing CD4 (a protein HIV uses to enter the cell), the virus is impaired in cells and its growth is limited. “'The key to RNAi [RNA interference] is using strands shorter than about 30 base pairs, because longer strands can cause the cell to commit suicide. "The cell realizes it is infected by the virus and commits hara-kiri to prevent its spread to neighbors," says Carl D. Novina, a member of the research team at MIT.' This self-destruction is known as the interferon response; Sharp's team bypassed the response by injecting siRNAs [dsRNA] that were 21 to 23 base pairs long.” Killing off protein without killing the cell is the key to stopping tumors and HIV.

[rayndeon]

wondering about HIV?

I found this helpful:

http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/06_02/hiv.shtml

By silencing the main structural protein of HIV and silencing CD4 (a protein HIV uses to enter the cell), the virus is impaired in cells and its growth is limited. “'The key to RNAi [RNA interference] is using strands shorter than about 30 base pairs, because longer strands can cause the cell to commit suicide. "The cell realizes it is infected by the virus and commits hara-kiri to prevent its spread to neighbors," says Carl D. Novina, a member of the research team at MIT.' This self-destruction is known as the interferon response; Sharp's team bypassed the response by injecting siRNAs [dsRNA] that were 21 to 23 base pairs long.” Killing off protein without killing the cell is the key to stopping tumors and HIV.

Wow. The field is very promising.

[sailornyanko]

Hrm.. HIV is more complex than that. If you silenced someone's CD4 receptors on their Lth cells, those cells would simply not work anymore and their whole point of existing in our body would be pointless since CD4 is the cell's receptor.

It just happens that HIV virus expresses a receptor that's shaped like a key copy to CD4 so it hand cling on to that receptor and that's how it enters the cell. I'd think a much more pointful (though complex) use of RNAi would be to enter the HIV DNA so that it the new HIV viral copies it produces wouldn't work. You'd have to find a way to be able to create a version of RNAi that can enter infected CD4 cells and that it's able to join the HIV viral DNA strain inside of the cell.

I think for the time being, scientists are much better off worrying about cancer. Making RNAi to silence telomerase and altered forms p53, p63 and p21 yet trying to artifically produce normal p53 would help knock off most cancer since these are the most common cell cycle genes that are altered.