The Nobel prize goes to three researchers who have helped in the Evolution of the jumps. By changing the genetic material, they create life-blocks that didn’t get the nature. Creepy? No, extremely useful.
To intervene In nature and to play, so to speak, “God”, especially in Germany, this research has a very bad reputation. Too great was the fear of what could go wrong along the way. The enormous advantages but that genetic engineering offers to all of us, even now, be quickly overlooked or the most are even not aware of.
The Nobel prize Committee sees it differently. Today it has awarded three researchers the Nobel prize in chemistry, have done just that: they have intervened in the Evolution and characterized in the laboratory to create something that has not brought the nature itself. Or, how Claes Gustafsson from the Nobel prize Committee calls it: “you have applied the principles of Charles Darwin in a test tube” and thus, “Evolution is 100 times more accelerated.”
Frances Arnold from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in the United States receives one half of the price for the directed Evolution of enzymes. With your method, enzymes can create a wide variety of chemical reactions accelerate. Without enzymes there is no life, play a leading role in the industry – which explains how wide-can be used Arnold’s method.
The second half of the price goes to George Smith of the University of Missouri in the U.S. state of Columbia and Gregory Winter, from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. Both modified viruses genetically and thus, a new method created in order to develop, for example, drugs.
“Hats off to Smith, Winter and Arnold,” says David Liu of Harvard University in the U.S. city of Cambridge, the research itself to directed Evolution. “They have contributed to a multi-disciplinary field of research, chemistry, molecular biology and protein science.”
“For the benefit of mankind”
Alfred Nobel established the Nobel prize, “which is assigned to the have made in the last year of humanity the greatest Benefit”. The Nobel prize Committee insured the sometimes a bit hesitant to journalists today in Stockholm, several times, that’s when this year’s Nobel prize in chemistry.
With the methods of the Nobel prize winners, among other things, Insulin for diabetics, Claes Gustafsson’s called an example. Without genetic engineering, Insulin would have to be won from pigs and would thus be a long time is not so compatible and in a large amount obtainable, such as the genetically engineered human Insulin.
“You can also make better enzymes for Laundry detergent,” said Brian Lohse, Professor of molecular and cellular pharmacology at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. By dirt gap proteins are altered in a lab artificially, they work, for example, at lower temperatures than would normally be the case. The Laundry is then already at a 30-degree clean rather than at 60 degrees, which saves energy.
Directed Evolution may also help to preserve coral reefs in front of the Die. Researchers are working to breed in the laboratory, corals cope with warmer and more acidic water. Such species may survive climate change better.
This is how it works
Most enzymes are proteins, or proteins. They are merely the result of a specific genetic sequence. One changed in the laboratory, the genome sequence – for example, by mutations of the triggering UV light, proteins with new, previously unknown properties. Many of these proteins are probably not better than the already well-known – but in a few cases, something comes out of it, which is a Tick better.
Frances Arnold came in the 1990s, the idea of this slightly improved proteins filter out, and change again until a protein with really good properties.
George Smith and Gregory the Winter of established the phage Display, in biotechnology, in the meantime, it is wide used method. Researchers modify the genetic material of a Virus that infects bacteria. The result is that the Virus is formed on its surface to other proteins. A Virus with the desired protein, the genome of this win, and analyze. You know, how this protein is built up.
The new method have triggered a “Revolution in drug development”, said Olga Botner from the Nobel prize Committee. A number of medicinal substances, for example, against auto-immune diseases, anthrax, and cancer, were produced and were being tested on humans.
Against toxins and cancer drugs
Brian Lohse of the University of Copenhagen developed with the phage Display, among other things, antidotes against snake venoms, he says Interview at the DW. To this end, he put the snake venom in a test tube with all kinds of genetically modified viruses that carry different proteins on their surface. “If something binds, washes away the unwanted virus simple,” he explains. “Then we can isolate the DNA of the bound Virus, the protein in the laboratory in order to synthesize and it is more accurate to investigate.”
In another project, Lohse studied enzymes, which are found in cancer cells. “To find a substance that binds to such an enzyme, is very much worth it,” he explains. You could be a raw material for a new cancer drug.
The method of phage display is “fast and cheap”, says Lohse. “There are several companies that sell libraries with a billion different viruses.” Within a week several of such libraries could be by testing and source materials for all kinds of medicines.
Very cool Ted Talk by Frances Arnold.
Big Business
For a long time the research of the three Nobel laureates left the University labs and has become big business. Pharmaceutical companies around the world use the procedures of the Nobel laureates. Brian Lohse works with several pharmaceutical companies, including the Denmark-based company Novo Nordisk, which produces Insulin for diabetics.
Even the creation of phage libraries containing billions of different viruses is a part of the business. A number of companies offer this, says Lohse. “You tell them what you’re interested in, and provide a suitable library.”
And the Nobel prize winner? The will undoubtedly enjoy the recognition of their Work – the money from the Nobel Foundation but you don’t have probably necessary.
Arnold, Frances, for example, holds over 50 U.S. patents, and advises, in the meantime, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. She was a co-founder of Gevo, a company that operates in chemicals, and biofuels from renewable raw materials. She currently manages two additional biotechnology companies.
Gregory Winter, founded in 1989, the company and Cambridge Antibody Technology, which he sold in 2006 to the pharmaceutical giant Astra Zeneca. It is a drug against rheumatism and inflammatory bowel produced diseases. A further company of the Winter, was taken over in 2006 by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. His current company, Bicycle Therapeutics, and develops cancer drugs.
Only George Smith, was dedicated after its discovery, more of a purely academic career. He is now Professor Emeritus.