Cell Death Nets 2002 Nobel Prize in Medicine

An anonymous reader writes "The recent press release at the Nobel website details the first of the 2002 Nobel Prizes. This year the Medicine prize goes to Sydney Brenner, H. Robert Horvitz, and John E. Sulston for their discovery of programmed cell death (also called apoptosis). Their seminal work in the model organism C. elegans established the foundation of cell suicide as a normal physiologic process. The implications are wide ranging including understanding organ development and cancer."

Comments

Understanding Cell Death and Regulatory Switches

[Salis]

The next step is to quantify the signals (chemicals) responsible for triggering the series of events that are called apoptosis and to elucidate just how transcription switches work. All 'switches' in the body are based off the concentration of various molecules, be they enzymes, cofactors, structural proteins, minerals (Na+, K+, Ca+), etc. The most interesting exploration would entail studying how a concentration of a signal yields a binary switch, that an event either be triggered or not.

The cell widely uses feedback loops, both positive and negative, to exponentially increase and decrease the amount of signal that is being produced at any one time. This signal may interact with other signal-producers to give a multi-signal, multi-enzyme response system that, through the non-linear dynamics of the system, yields a definitive high and low concentration of signal that determines whether an event is to be triggered or not.

To fully understand the mind-boggling complexity of a single cell, imagine a system composed of 5000 enzymes (or more) all interacting with 10,000 molecules (or more) with thousands of possible reactions. Now try to simulate this all at the same time, using non-linear kinetics, and predict the outcome of an initial state.

A lot of crazy things happen, including shifts in entire groups of genes (responsible for protein & sRNA synthesis) caused by very tiny disturbances. The non-linear dynamics of the cell are set up so perfectly that its self-regulation is simply amazing.

My Two Cents...not meant to be a full explanation of why apoptosis is so cool or where the research is going from there.

Salis