Physiology or Medicine

1901-2010 The Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have rewarded several breakthroughs that revealed the way in which our bodies protect us against microscopic threats of almost any description. Each of these breakthroughs have provided us with a better understanding of how the immune system senses an attack, how it recognizes and deals with intruders…

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1906-2000 The Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have rewarded several achievements that helped to reveal the mysterious complexities of the nervous system. The breakthroughs made by each of the Nobel Laureates below have provided us with a better understanding of how nerves are made up, and how they create and transmit information in the…

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Many important tasks in living cells like muscle contraction and nerve impulse transmission are driven by electrical power, generated by positively and negatively charged atoms, or ions, flowing into and out of cells. It was assumed that this ion transport is regulated by tunnel-like channels nestled within the cell’s outer boundary, yet for decades it…

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The 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine rewarded three scientists who deciphered the signalling pathways that regulate some of the brain’s most important functions. The primary switches for these processes are neurotransmitters: chemical messengers sent from one nerve cell to another across the tiny junctions, or synapses, that separate them. Arvid Carlsson overturned conventional…

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The immune system is primed to respond to disease-bearing microbes of almost any description, but what was far from clear was exactly what measures it uses to defeat any such attack. The approaches that the two recipients of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine took to uncovering the answer differed in philosophies and…

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Viruses, such as those that cause the common cold or flu, are a particularly devious form of intruder to tackle. Once they enter their host, these infectious agents find cells to hide in while they reproduce in order to infiltrate more targets. Fortunately for us our internal defence system has a trick up its sleeve…

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For virtually every invading pathogen, be it a bacterium, virus or another microorganism, the body has a unique antibody specially designed to stop it in its tracks. Made and released by a special type of white blood cell, B lymphocytes, antibodies search for and bind to a distinctive molecule located on the assigned invader, sending…

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While fighting off infectious agents, our immune defences must take extreme care to avoid harming any cells belonging to its own host. Achieving this requires a sophisticated self-identification system, and this is centred on a collection of genes called the major histocompatibility complex, or MHC, which encode proteins known collectively as histocompatibility antigens. Each individual…

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