Award granted for trio's work on transport system within cells

US duo James E. Rothman and Randy W. Schekman and German-born Thomas C. Suedhof won the Nobel medicine prize on Monday for their groundbreaking work on how the cell organizes its transport system, the jury said.

The trio, who all work at US universities, were honored for "their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells", it said.

Their discoveries have had a major impact on understanding how cargo is delivered within and outside the cell and have implications for work on several diseases, including neurological and immunological disorders, as well as diabetes, the Nobel committee said.

Each cell is a factory that produces and exports molecules.

"For instance, insulin is manufactured and released into the blood, and chemical signals called neurotransmitters are sent from one nerve cell to another. These molecules are transported around the cell in small packages called vesicles," it explained.

The three Nobel laureates "have discovered the molecular principles that govern how this cargo is delivered to the right place at the right time in the cell", it said.

The winners will share equally the prize sum of 8 million Swedish kronor ($1.25 million), reduced because of the economic crisis last year from the 10 million kronor awarded since 2001.

Schekman, one of the laureate, told AFP on Monday that he received the news with a mixture of "disbelief and joy".

"My reaction when I heard about it was one of disbelief and joy," said Schekman, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley.

He said that receiving the Nobel Prize was the culmination of nearly four decades of dedicated work.

"I've been at it for 37 years, and Rothman for a similar period of time," he said. "We realized 25 years ago that we were working on the same subject."

(China Daily 10/08/2013 page10)