Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004   Species differences The area of the olfactory epithelium (red) in dogs is some forty times larger than in humans. Mice – the species Axel and Buck studied – have about one thousand different odorant receptor types. Humans have a smaller number than mice; some of the…

NOBELFÖRSAMLINGEN KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET THE NOBEL ASSEMBLY AT THE KAROLINSKA INSTITUTE 6 October 1997 has today decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1997 to Stanley B. Prusiner for his discovery of “Prions – a new biological principle of infection”. Summary The 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to…

1. Through horizontal transmission from e.g. a sheep to a cow (BSE). 2. In inherited forms, mutations in the prion gene are transmitted from parent to child. 3. They can arise spontaneously. Route of infection When cows are fed with offals prepared from infected sheep, prions are taken up from the gut and transported along…

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Presentation Speech by Professor the Count K.A.H. Mörner, Rector of the , on December 10, 1906 Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen. This year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is presented for work accomplished in the field of anatomy. It has been awarded to Professors Camillo Golgi of Pavia and Ramón y…

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004   A large family of odorant receptors Richard Axel and Linda Buck published their fundamental paper in 1991, in which they described the genes coding for a large family of odorant receptors. The odorant receptors are located on the olfactory receptor cells in the nasal cavity. Each…

2. When a cow is fed with offals derived from a PrPSc-infected sheep, prions are somehow taken up from the gut and transported to the brain. The details of this process are not yet known, but one likely scenario is that PrPSc enters a nerve ending (synapse) from where it is transported along the nerve…

Ernst Boris Chain was born on June 19, 1906, in Berlin, his father, Dr. Michael Chain, being a chemist and industrialist. He was educated at the Luisengymnasium, Berlin, where he soon became interested in chemistry, stimulated by visits to his father’s laboratory and factory. He next attended the Friedrich-Wilhelm University, Berlin, where he graduated in…

This animation gives a very simplified view of how prions cause fatal neurodegenerative diseases of the brain in man and animals next step 1. The prion protein, PrP, is a normal constituent of many cell types in the body, notably nerve cells (neurons) in the brain. The name prion (pronounced pree-on) is derived from”proteinaceous infectious…

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