The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been given to a trio of scientists who discovered why our DNA is not being continually plunged into “chemical chaos”.
Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar together won the award for their work on DNA, which mapped and explained how cells repair it and keep the genetic information around. The work “provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments”, the Nobel committee said.
DNA contains the genetic information that controls how human beings are shaped and allows them to grow. It is under constant assault from its environment — but mechanisms in cells allow it to remain intact, and it is work on those mechanisms that the three winners were recognised for.
In their announcement, the committee described how Lindahl “demonstrated that DNA decays at a rate that ought to have made the development of life on Earth impossible”. “This insight led him to discover a molecular machinery, base excision repair, which constantly counteracts the collapse of our DNA.”
