Tomas Lindahl, Paul L. Modrich and Aziz Sancar were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for having mapped and explained how the cell repairs its DNA and safeguards its genetic information.
Lindahl, of the Francis Crick Institute in London, was honored for his discoveries on base excision repair – the cellular mechanism that repairs damaged DNA during the cell cycle.
Modrich, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine, was recognized for showing how cells correct errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division.
Sancar, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was cited for mapping the mechanism cells use to repair ultraviolet damage to DNA.
“Their systematic work has made a decisive contribution to the understanding of how the living cell functions, as well as providing knowledge about the molecular causes of several hereditary diseases and about mechanisms behind both cancer development and aging,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the prize, said in a statement.
They shared the prize of about $960,000. The prize was announced in Stockholm by Goran K. Hansson, the academy’s permanent secretary.
This week’s three Nobel Prizes reflect the globalization of science, which the United States often dominated in the last century.
The award in medicine or physiology on Monday went to citizens of China and Japan, as well as an American. The physics prize Tuesday went to experts in Japan and Canada.
Wednesday’s prize in chemistry – Sancar was born in Turkey, and Lindahl is the 29th native of Sweden to be named a Nobel laureate – reflects the globalization trend, while underscoring the centrality of U.S. research institutions, where two of the three winners work.
Since 2000, the United States has managed to maintain its front-runner status in the chemistry prize category, its citizens winning at least part of the award most years and shut out only twice, in 2007 and 2011.
Other chemistry laureates have come from Austria, France, Germany, Israel, Japan and Switzerland.
