Congratulations to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak, who just won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine this morning. They won for their discovery of telomeres, the caps on the ends of chromosomes that keep them from degrading and ward off aging. The Nobel site has posted some useful information about why this was such a profound discovery.
Carl Zimmer writes about science regularly for the New York Times and magazines such as Discover, where he is a contributing editor and columnist.
He is the author of seven books, the most recent of which is The Tangled Bank: An Introduction To Evolution. His website is carlzimmer.com and his address is [ blog at carlzimmer dot com ].
Recent Posts
DISCOVERmagazine: Living World DISCOVER Blogs: Bad Astronomy
October 5th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Parochial point – Blackburn is Australian, so the Australian press is all over it, one of the rare times science reaches the front page here.
She has spent virtually all her professional life in the US and is a dual citizen, but what the heck. We don’t have too many Nobel laureates to go around; Blackburn makes a grand total of four living ones. Not nearly as feted or as recognised as the sportsmen and sportswomen, needless to say.
October 6th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Coincidentally, I wrote an blog post about telomeres as evidence against ID a couple of days ago, and updated it today to reflect the news. IDers are claiming telomeres as evidence for ID. As usual, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Telomeres are a crude hack that evolution cobbled up to cover up for deeper failings in DNA replication. Bacteria have a much simpler fix.
October 14th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Not to be a stickler, but the prize was given not just for “telomeres” (i.e., the DNA at the ends of linear chromosomes) but also for the identification of telomerase, the enzyme that restores and thereby maintains telomeric DNA.
November 17th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
[...] the strange post here: Nobel For Telomeres | The Loom Submit this to Script & StyleShare this on BlinklistShare this on del.icio.usDigg this!Post [...]