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'Kiss of Death' Discoverers Get Nobel Prize
baldinux writes "Science Daily has written an article describing the cellular process of regulated protein degredation, which has landed three people the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. According to the article, this finding could greatly help researchers understand ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, making it possible to develop drugs to treat cervical cancer, for example."
Biochemists could, I presume, tailor ubiquitin to grab up undesirable proteins and still have the degradation function work.
Imagine all the diseases that come from bad proteins! This could unleash a new class of therapies.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
The degradation is not indiscriminate but takes place through a process that is controlled in detail so that the proteins to be broken down at any given moment are given a molecular label, a 'kiss of death', to be dramatic. The labelled proteins are then fed into the cells' "waste disposers", the so called proteasomes, where they are chopped into small pieces and destroyed.
Isn't this similar to the way OO languages are doing, create an object, use it and dispose it.
Actuall, isn't this the way we are doing things on a daily basis? It's interesting to find out that even our body is unknowingly doing almost the same process.
...it's not actually chemistry. It's biology. It's not the fault of us chemists that biology doesn't get a prize.
I recall reading somewhere that proteins and their production / destruction getting messed up was one of the causes of general aging. Sounds kind of brave-new-world-ish but cool nonetheless.
Queue the morality questions along the lines of genetic engineering.