The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2012 to
Robert J. Lefkowitz
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
and
Brian K. Kobilka
Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
"for studies of G-protein–coupled receptors"
Smart receptors on cell surfaces
Your body is a fine-tuned system of interactions between billions of cells. Each cell has tiny receptors that enable it to sense its environment, so it can adapt to new situtations. Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka are awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for groundbreaking discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family of such receptors: G-protein–coupled receptors.
More information:
http://www.nobelprize.org
David Spichiger, SCS
11.10.2012