Günter Blobel, a cell biologist at Rockefeller University German origin described by colleagues as "the father of modern cell biology," won the Nobel prize this year physiology or medicine. Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute announced yesterday that Blobel received the award for his discovery that proteins come with "address labels" that determine their fate in the cell .
After proteins are synthesized in the ribosomes of the cell, they must travel to where they are needed. Some are transported to the cell organelles such as mitochondria or chloroplasts, while others are excreted to do the job outside the cell. In the early 1970s, Blobel suggested that these classes - proteins provided for excretion - come with a stretch of amino acids at their ends which acts as a biochemical postcode. According to this "signal hypothesis," the code helps to somehow guide the protein into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), a wide folded membrane system that looks like a beach ball deflated and has been known to be a relay station exported proteins.
in 1975, Blobel provided proof of this theory by decrypting the first postal codes ER in an experimental device that mimics the way of cell sorting protein. He and his colleagues then decrypt the export system overall ER, including the "particle recognition signal" that recognizes the codes and the channel by which proteins to sneak into the ER.
Blobel, in various collaborations later showed that similar zip codes are used to treat protein in all cell organelles and that these systems zip code can be found in all life forms, from humans to bacteria. His work has highlighted diseases such as high cholesterol and lysosomal storage disorders family, which result from errors in the signals or transport machinery. protein signals have also become an essential tool for researchers genetically modifying bacteria, plants and animals to produce drugs. By adding a specific tag to the desired protein, they can mark them for excretion, which makes them much easier to harvest.
Scientists in the field say they have seen the price come Blobel. "This has been a long time," says cell biologist Randy Schekman of the University of California, Berkeley. "He kept all [protein signal field] from the beginning to the end." Bernhard Dobberstein, a cell biologist and molecular molecular biology Centre in Heidelberg, Germany, and Blobel's research collaborator in the mid-1970s, agrees. "Basically, everything [Blobel] suggested turned out to be true."
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