Yahoo – AFP,
October 2, 2017
 |
| Winners of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (L-R) Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young are pictured on a display during a press conference (AFP Photo/Jonathan NACKSTRAND) |
Stockholm
(AFP) - US geneticists Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young
were awarded the Nobel Medicine Prize Monday for shedding light on the internal
biological clock that governs the wake-sleep cycles of most living things.
"Their
discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological
rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth's revolutions," the Nobel
Assembly announced.
Life on
Earth is adapted to the rotation of our planet. For many years, scientists have
known that living organisms, including humans, have an internal clock that help
them anticipate and adapt to the rhythm of the day.
Hall, 72,
Rosbash, 73, and Young, 68, "were able to peek inside our biological clock
and elucidate its inner workings," said the Nobel Assembly.
The clock
influences such biological functions as hormone levels, sleep, body temperature
and metabolism.
It is what
causes jetlag -- when our internal clock and external environment move out of
sync when we change time zones.
Using the
fruit fly as a model organism, this year's laureates isolated a gene that
controls the daily biological rhythm.
"They
showed that this gene encodes a protein that accumulates in the cell during the
night and is then degraded during the day," the Nobel team said.
"Subsequently
they identified additional protein components of this machinery, exposing the
mechanism governing the self-sustaining clockwork inside the cell."
The trio
will share the prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about $1.1 million or
937,000 euros).
Last year,
Yoshinori Ohsumi of Japan won the prestigious prize for his work on autophagy
-- a process whereby cells "eat themselves", which when disrupted can
cause Parkinson's and diabetes.
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