Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello “have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine” earlier today for “for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes”.
Before I will use an excerpt of the NYT’s article explaining this process and its importance, I cannot help but object to the use of the word ‘won’ in this context. Since when is the Nobel Prize a race? Since when is it an ordinary contest? It is not. It is a means of honoring those who do very valuable work, in different fields of work and to encourage more research. People receive the Nobel Prize, or get honored with it.
It is not, or should, be considered some kind of ordinary competition.
Okay, from the article:
The process, called RNA interference, also is being studied for treating such conditions as hepatitis virus infection and heart disease. It is already widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes.
Fire, 47, of Stanford University, and Mello, 45, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, published their seminal work in a 1998 paper.
”This year’s Nobel laureates have discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information,” the institute said.
Erna Moller, a member of the Nobel committee, said their research helped shed new light on a complicated process that had confused researchers for years.
[…]
Genes produce their effect by sending molecules called messenger RNA to the protein-making machinery of a cell. In RNA interference, certain molecules trigger the destruction or inactivation of RNA from a particular gene, so that no protein is produced. Thus the gene is effectively silenced.
Congrats to both; they deserve it.
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