Biomolecule Imaging Pioneers Share Nobel Prize

Today, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 to Jacques Dubochet(University of Lausanne, Switzerland) andJoachim Frank (Columbia University, New York, USA), andRichard Henderson (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK). The award is given "for developingcryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution"Cool microscope technology revolutionises biochemistryWe may soon have detailed images of life ’s complex machineries in atomic resolution. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 is awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for the development of cryo-electron microscopy, which both simplifies and improves the imaging of biomolecules. This method has moved biochemistry int o a new era.A picture is a key to understanding. Scientific breakthroughs often build upon the successful visualization of objects invisible to the human eye. However, biochemical maps have long been filled with blank spaces because the available technology has had difficulty generating images of much of life ’s molecular machinery. Cryo-electron microscopy changes all of this. Researchers can now freeze biomolecules mid-movement and visualize processes they have never previously seen, which is decisive for both the basic understanding of life’s chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals.Electron microscopes were long believed to only be suitable for imaging d...

Source: The A and P Professor - October 4, 2017 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs