Trio win Nobel Chemistry Prize for DNA repair work

Yahoo – AFP, Pia Ohlin, 7 Oct 2015

Nobel Chemistry Prize 2015 co-winners (L-R) Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, Paul

 Modrich of the US and Turkish-American Aziz Sancar (AFP Photo/Justin

Tallis / Megan Morr / Max Eng)

Stockholm (AFP) - Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich of the United States and Aziz Sancar, a Turkish-American, won the 2015 Nobel Chemistry Prize on Wednesday for work on how cells repair damaged DNA.

The three opened a dazzling frontier in medicine by unveiling how the body repairs DNA mutations that can cause sickness and contribute to ageing, the Nobel jury said.

"Their systematic work has made a decisive contribution to the understanding of how the living cell functions, as well as providing knowledge about the molecular causes of several hereditary diseases and about mechanisms behind both cancer development and ageing," the panel said.

The three co-winners of the Nobel Chemistry

 Prize opened a dazzling frontier in medicine 

by unveiling how the body repairs DNA

mutations that can cause sickness and

contribute to ageing, the judging panel says

(AFP Photo/Jonathan Nackstrand)

DNA -- deoxyribonucleic acid -- is the chemical code for making and sustaining life.

Cells divide, or replicate, billions of times through our lifetime.

Molecular machines seek to copy the code perfectly, but random slipups in their work can cause the daughter cells to die or malfunction. DNA can also be damaged by strong sunlight and other environmental factors.

But there is a swarm of proteins -- a molecular repair kit -- designed to monitor the process. It proof-reads the code and repairs damage.

The three were lauded for mapping these processes, starting with Lindahl, who identified so-called repair enzymes -- the basics in the toolbox.

Eternal life?

Sancar discovered the mechanisms used by cells to fix damage by ultraviolet radiation. Modrich laid bare a complex DNA-mending process called mismatch repair.

"The basic research carried out by the 2015 Nobel laureates in chemistry has not only deepened our knowledge of how we function, but could also lead to the development of lifesaving treatments," the Nobel committee said.

With cells able to repair themselves, one could ponder the dizzying possibility that humans could go on living forever.

"No, I don't believe in eternal life," Lindahl, who is based in Britain, told reporters by telephone at the prize announcement.

He said scientists were increasingly turning their attention away from curing diseases such as cancer and instead looking for chronic treatments.

"We are getting away a little bit (from) trying to find a cure for everything, and convert diseases to something we can live with," he said.

"It's difficult to cure diabetes but we have good ways of treating diabetic patients, and I think with regard to DNA damage that will be an increasingly important aspect."

DNA repair researcher Nora Goosen of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands told AFP scientists were looking at targeted attacks on cancer.

She said the same mechanism by which cells repair DNA damage can also make them resist the effects of chemotherapy. By understanding how the cell repair system works, doctors hope they will one day be able to instruct cancerous cells not to fight against treatment, thus making chemotherapy more effective, she explained.

Other scientists heaped praise on Lindahl for his pioneering work.

They included Britain's prestigious Royal Society, of which he is a fellow, and British biochemist Sir Tim Hunt, who was a co-winner of the 2001 Nobel for cell duplication.

Chose studies over football

"This is wonderful news!" Hunt told the Science Media Centre (SMC) in London. "Tomas was my boss for almost 20 years, a real scientists' scientist... (a) richly-deserved prize."

It is the seventh time DNA research has been honoured with a Nobel prize. The first was in 1962, for the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Lindahl, Modrich and Sancar share the prize sum of eight million Swedish kronor (around $950,000 or 855,000 euros).

Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, emeritus director of Cancer Research UK, at Clare

 Hall Laboratory in Potters Bar after he was jointly awarded the Nobel Chemistry

Prize on October 7, 2016 (AFP Photo/Justin Tallis)

Lindahl, 77, is the emeritus director of Cancer Research UK at Clare Hall Laboratory in Britain.

Modrich was born in 1946 and grew up in a small town in northern New Mexico, which instilled in him a love of the natural world.

"There was huge biological diversity around me," he said in a statement on Duke University, where he is a professor of biochemistry.

"Within five miles, the ecology can change dramatically -- it was very thought provoking."

In 1963, his father, who was the local high school biology teacher, gave him very important advice, he recalled: "You should learn about this DNA stuff."

Sancar, 69, was meanwhile born in the small Turkish town of Savur. He could have become a professional football player -- Turkey's national junior team courted him to become their goalkeeper -- but he chose to focus on his academic studies instead.

After working as a doctor in the countryside, he resumed his biochemistry studies at the age of 27, and then went to the University of Texas in Dallas.

He is now a professor of biochemistry and biochemics at University of North Carolina in the US.

He told the Nobel Foundation he was stunned by his win.

"I wasn't expecting it at all. I was very surprised."

The Nobel awards week continues with the announcements for the two most closely-watched prizes: on Thursday the winner of the literature prize will be announced, followed by the peace prize on Friday.

The economics prize wraps up this year's Nobel season on Monday.

Related Articles:

Russian scientists find new way to repair DNA that may cure Alzheimer’s


"The Quantum Factor" – Apr 10, 2011 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Galaxies, Universe, Intelligent design, Benevolent design, Aliens, Nikola Tesla (Quantum energy), Inter-Planetary Travel, DNA, Genes, Stem Cells, Cells, Rejuvenation, Shift of Human Consciousness, Spontaneous Remission, Religion, Dictators, Africa, China, Nuclear Power, Sustainable Development, Animals, Global Unity.. etc.) - (Text Version)

"... DNA is a Dynamic Molecule, not a static one.

Humanity is stuck in the 3D portion of their biological thinking. In your 3-D life, you simply accept the chemistry you're given. You act as though the three percent gene producing part is all there is. You believe it is a chemical protocol that is unchangeable and simply "you." You don't see it for the way it's designed. It's dynamic and always has been. It's not set, but will continue to simply repeat what it does unless there is another quantum influence on it.

Therefore you live with the 3 percent as though it were all there is, and since it just "came with your body" and seems to control everything, you never talk to it. Many of you come in with pre-dispositions based upon the karma which is put upon you from your past lives. You don't come in clean [without karmic energy]. Instead, you arrive with pre-dispositions, fears and phobias. Some are positive. Perhaps you come in as a prodigy continuing your last life... the 8-year-old who can paint like a master and do brushstrokes that take 30 years to develop. What does that tell you about what must be in the DNA?

Perhaps you come in as the composer, the pianist, the prodigy, the violinist, just waiting until your hands can go on the fingerboard or can reach up and fret the notes. Perhaps you come in knowing how to play the piano, just waiting for your hands to get big enough to do what you used to do... without any lessons. How do you explain that, dear ones? The answer is that all this is contained in the dynamic quantum instruction sets of your DNA... the part you never talk to it.

Cell Division - a static process?

Let me take you to the cellular division process. We've said this before, but you need to hear this to understand how it works. A cell is ready to divide. The Human body is designed to rejuvenate... all tissue. You've been told that there's some tissue that does not rejuvenate, but that is incorrect. It all rejuvenates at different speeds at different times and in different ways. It rejuvenates. So now you know that the Human body is designed to live a long time. Unfortunately, the energy that you have created on this planet and what you've gone through, has beat it up. You don't live much more than 80 years. That was not the design.

The Biblical personalities were sometimes prophets and sometimes masters and sometimes just there... and lived for hundreds of years. Did they really? Or perhaps this is that just a metaphor? Did they get that right in the Bible without a error in transcription? I'm going to tell you the truth. It's very accurate. Thousands of years ago you lived a very long time, Lemurian. If you knew your lifespan, you'd gasp. But not anymore. Instructions have been given over time to DNA, literally, by the energy of the planet... en energy that you have created through consciousness.

A cell divides. Right before it divides, it needs the blueprint to clone itself. The blueprint is available from the stem cell. The stem cell gets its information from the quantum part of the DNA, which has never changed since you were born. It's remained static, since nothing has ever changed it... and the fact that you don't believe it's changeable and have just accepted aging. There's not a conscious effort to do anything with it, and it just lays there like it always did.

The diving cell "talks" to the stem cell and says, "Do the same thing you always did? Change anything?" And the stem cell talks to the cell that is dividing, saying, "Make another one just the same." Then you rejuvenate just like the last one, accepting everything you received when you were born. ..."