Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko have just won Israel’s first Chemistry Nobel Prize.
“The scientists found that proteins that could cause disease are “labeled” for destruction with a molecule called ubiquitin which dispatches them to the body’s “waste disposal” units, called proteasomes.
The marked proteins are then chopped to pieces. When such degradation fails to work correctly, the result can be diseases like cervical cancer and cystic fibrosis. So research in this area may lead to new drugs for those diseases and others, the academy said.”
Now these guys are the kind of people Israel was built on (yeah, yeah, I know it’s dangling – sue me):
“I have never thought of money, we earn very small salaries in Israel,” he said. “It is more the honor for Israel, for myself, that a small country can make it … I am as proud for myself as I am for my country.”
Thank you for every other informative blog.