US-born scientists Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young won
the 2017 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discoveries of molecular
mechanisms controlling our biological clocks, the award-giving body said
on Monday Oct 02,2017
The mechanisms help explain issues such as why people travelling long
distances over several time zones often suffer jet lag and they have
wider implications for health such as increased risk for certain
diseases.
"(The three scientists') discoveries explain how plants, animals and
humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronized with the
Earth's revolutions," the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska
Institute said in a statement.
The laureates used fruit flies to isolate a gene that controls the
normal daily biological rhythm and showed how this gene encoded a
protein that accumulates in the cell during the night and degrades
during the day.
"The clock regulates critical functions such as behavior, hormone
levels, sleep, body temperature and metabolism," the Assembly said on
awarding the prize of 9 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million).
Thomas Perlmann, secretary at the Karolinska Institute Nobel Committee,
described the reaction of Rosbash when first informed of the award: "He
was silent and then he said ‘you are kidding me’."
Medicine is the first of the Nobel Prizes awarded each year. The prizes
for achievements in science, literature and peace were created in
accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred
Nobel and have been awarded since 1901.
Nobel medicine laureates have included scientific greats such as
Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, and Karl Landsteiner,
whose identification of separate blood types opened the way to carrying
out safe transfusions.
The prize has not been without controversy, especially with the benefit
of hindsight, such as with 1948 award for the discovery of DDT, a
chemical that helped battle epidemics but was later banned due to its
harmful environmental impact
The body clock so precisely controls our body to match day and night that disrupting it can have profound implications.
The ghastly experience of jet lag is caused by the body being out of sync with the world around it.
In the short term, body clock disruption affects memory formation, but in the long term it increases the risk of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
The Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2017 has been awarded to Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young for their discoveries about the body’s daily rhythm, or circadian rhythms
The American trio were recognised by the Nobel committee for being able to peek inside the ‘body’s biological clock’ and discover “how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth’s revolutions.” Through their research they showed that the particular gene “encodes a protein that accumulates in the cell during the night, and is then degraded during the day”.
The citation for the 9-million-kronor ($1.1 million) prize says that the researchers used fruit flies as a model organism and “isolated a gene that controls the normal daily biological rhythm”.
What is circardian rhythm?
Circadian rhythms, colloquially known as our biological clock, are the ways in which the body keeps tabs on the passing of a day, thus, affecting sleep, hormone levels, behaviour, metabolism and even body temperature. These rhythms show why disturbance in a particular pattern – such as lack of sleep due to jet lag or insomnia – could potentially have devastating consequences on the body and result in increased risk of many diseases.
This is particularly relevant after a leading sleep scientist claimed that lack of sleep is slowly killing us.
What have the researchers identified?
According to the Nobel committee’s citation, the researchers looked into the inner workings of the circardian rhythms and discovered that all kinds of life – plants and humans alike – regulate their biological clock with the help of the sun using ‘special technologies’ in the body. Using fruit flies, they isolated the gene that controls the normal daily biological rhythm”.
Consequently additional protein components of this machinery were also identified by them that, in turn, revealed the mechanism that governs “the self-sustaining clockwork inside the cell”. By using the same principles, the biological clocks of other multicellular organisms like human beings can also be identified. The discrepancy between this biological clock and external surroundings can adversely affect the well being of an organism. According to a report in The Guardian, the discovery of different genes and proteins by the team has aided the explanation of the workings of the self-regulating mechanism as well as the way light can synchronise the clock.
Robash is on the faculty at Brandeis University, Young at Rockefeller University and Hall is at the University of Maine. The prize was announced at the Nobel Forum at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. The winners have raised “awareness of the importance of a proper sleep hygiene,” Juleen Zierath of the Nobel Academy said.
Previous Winners Of Nobel Prize in Medicine
2011 - Bruce Beutler, Jules Hoffmann and Ralph Steinman shared the prize after revolutionising the understanding of
how the body fights infection.
From 1901 till this year, Nobel prizes have been awarded 579 times to
911 Laureates and organisations with the youngest winner being 2014
Peace Prize awardee Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan at 17 years.
By
winning the Peace Nobel at this tender age along with India’s Kailash
Satyarthi, Ms. Yousafzai beat the previous record of Lawrence Bragg, who
won the
Physics Nobel in 1915 at the age of 25.
The
word “Laureate” signifies the laurel wreath awarded to winners of
athletic competitions and poetic meets in Ancient Greece. In Greek
mythology, god Apollo is represented wearing on his head a laurel
wreath, a circular crown made of branches and leaves of the bay laurel.
The
statutes of the Nobel Foundation say, “If none of the works under
consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first
paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year.”
“If, even then, the prize cannot be awarded, the amount shall be added to the Foundation’s restricted funds.”
On 27 November 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his last will and testament,
giving the largest share of his fortune to a series of prizes in
Physics,
Chemistry,Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace.
In
1968, Sweden’s central bank Sveriges Riksbank established The Sveriges
Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Nobel.
At the
Nobel Award ceremonies on December 10, the Laureates receive three
things: a Nobel Diploma, a Nobel Medal and a document confirming the
Nobel Prize amount.
Each Nobel Diploma is a unique work of art, created by foremost Swedish and Norwegian artists and calligraphers.
The Nobel Medals are handmade with careful precision and in 18 carat green gold plated with 24 carat gold.
The Nobel Prize amount for 2014 is set at Swedish kronor (SEK) 8.0 million per full Nobel Prize.
The average age of all Nobel Laureates in all prize categories between 1901 and 2014 is 59 years.
Most common birthday month of all the Nobel Laureates is June.
Since 1901, prizes have not been awarded 49 times, most of them during
World
War I (1914-1918) and II (1939-1945).
Leonid Hurwicz has the distinction of being the oldest Nobel recipient at the age of 90 for Economics in 2007.
Till now, 48 women have won the Nobel while two Laureates declined the prize.
Jean-Paul Sartre, awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, declined it as he had consistently declined all official honours.
Le
Duc Tho, awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with U.S. Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord, said
he was not in a position to accept the award, citing the situation in
Vietnam as his reason.
Four Laureates were forced by authorities to decline the Nobel.
Adolf
Hitler forbade three Germans Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt and Gerhard
Domagk, from accepting the Nobel Prize. They, however, received the
Nobel Prize Diploma and Medal later but not the prize amount.
Boris
Pasternak, the 1958 Nobel Laureate in Literature, initially accepted
the Prize but was later coerced by authorities of his native country the
Soviet Union to decline the award.
Three Peace Laureates —
Germany’s Carl von Ossietzky, Myanmar’s pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu
Kyi and Chinese rights activist Liu Xiaobo — were under arrest at the
time of the award.
The International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) was given the Nobel Peace Prize thrice while its founder Henry
Dunant won the first Peace Prize in 1901.
Linus Pauling has the
distinction of being the only person to have been awarded two unshared
Nobel Prizes — the 1954 Prize in Chemistry and the 1962 Peace Prize.
Since 1901, when Nobel Prizes were first given, Peace Prize has been
awarded by a committee of five, appointed by the Norwegian Parliament
Storting in accordance with Alfred Nobel’s will.
Alfred Nobel never disclosed why he didn’t give the task of awarding the Peace Prize to a Swedish body.
The reasons are speculative.
One
argument is that Nobel admired Norwegian patriot and leading author
Bjornstjerne Bjornson while another is that the Storting was the first
national legislature to vote in support for the international peace
movement.
Nobel may also have favoured distribution of the tasks
related to the Nobel Prizes within the Swedish-Norwegian union or he may
have feared that given the highly political nature of the Peace Prize,
it might become a tool in power politics thus reducing its significance
as an instrument for peace.
“It is my express wish that in
awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the
candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he
be Scandinavian or not,” Nobel wrote in his will.
During the 20th century, 8 Scandinavians have won the Peace Prize — 5 Swedes, 2 Norwegians and one Dane.
In
the nomination and selection process, the committee has the assistance
of a secretary and since the establishment of the Norwegian Nobel
Institute in 1904, this person is also the institute’s director.
There have been several criticism and protests against decisions of the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1901.
The selection process
The Peace Prize award ceremony on December 10 is the culmination of a long selection process.
According to rules, there can be a maximum of three Laureates in a category every year.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee begins the whole process by inviting nominations which can be submitted by February 1 each year.
Who are entitled to nominate candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize?
Present
and past members of the Nobel Committee and advisers at the Nobel
Institute; members of national assemblies and governments, and members
of the Inter-Parliamentary Union; members of the Permanent Court of
Arbitration and the International Court of Justice at the Hague and
members of the Commission of the Permanent International Peace Bureau.
Besides
them, members of the Institut de Droit International and present
university professors of law, political science, history and philosophy;
and holders of the Nobel Peace Prize can also nominate.
After reviewing their qualifications, a shortlist of the candidates is made.
The
announcement of the Laureate’s name is often made on a Friday in
mid-October at the Nobel Institute building and the award is presented
annually on December 10, the day Alfred Nobel died in 1896
