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Protein Researchers Win Nobel Prize In Chemistry
nucal writes "The
2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to
Rod MacKinnon and
Peter Agree for their work on proteins that form ion and water channels in cell membranes. In particular, solving the structure of potassium channels was a major achievement, since this was the first multispan transmembrane protein structure to be solved by X-ray crystallography. There is also structural information on aquaporins (water channels) as well."
It's Mother Nature's own nanotech. The proteins are like Maxwell's Demon but for water. Anything else is kept out and only H2O is passed in.
Well.. not really.. since they don't violate the second law of thermodynamics.
We can now model, construct and manipulate structures on the atomic level.
Take it easy.. we're not there yet by a far cry..
If you want to model on the atomic level with any kind of accuracy.. you need to do quantum mechanics. The current methods (Nobel prize 1998 BTW) are reasonable for about 100 atoms.
(I'm currenty running a single energy calculation of 73 atoms. It'll be done in 36 hours)
Contruct and manipulate? Well.. we can somewhat predict what a protein will fold like, but even given that, it's still quite a leap to create enzymes from 'scratch'.
Actually, the 'mass production scale' is the easiest part!
Once you do have a protein/enzyme that works, you can stick that DNA into some bacteria and grow them on the industrial scale, and then extract the protein. (Tricky, but methods have already been developed. It's how most pharmaceuticals are made.)
Yes, but does it compare to this one?
A NEW GENERATION OF CA-2+ INDICATORS WITH GREATLY IMPROVED FLUORESCENCE PROPERTIES
GRYNKIEWICZ G, POENIE M, TSIEN RY
JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY 260 (6): 3440-3450 1985
Times Cited : 14512
Roger Tsien must be up soon, he invented the field of fluroescent biosensors. Both with the small molecule dyes and the development of GFP into a useful molecular tag and genetically encoded FRET sensor element.
Perhaps the most interesting outcome of this years Nobel prize winners, is that:
e ws/2003/10/09/wnobel09.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/10/09 /ixworld.html
"One of the two Americans who won yesterday's Nobel prize for chemistry said he might use some of his award money to help defend academic freedoms against restrictions imposed on scientists as part of the US war on terrorism." (news.telegraph)
Hurrah for those who still aspire to pure learning! The full article may be viewed here, if you're interested:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n
Regards,
-pararox-