From fission to fusion: a perspective on the research that won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2013.
Secretion is widespread in all eukaryotic cells: all of us experience this in the course of daily life--saliva, mucus, sweat, tears, bile juice, adrenalin, etc.--the list is extremely long. How does a cell manage to repeatedly spit out some stuff without losing the rest? The answer is: through regulated vesicle trafficking within the cell. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013 was awarded to Drs Randy Schekman, James E Rothman and Thomas C Südhof for their 'discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells'. Dr Randy Schekman and his colleagues discovered a number of genes required for vesicle trafficking from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi; the James E Rothman group unravelled the protein machinery that allows vesicles to bud off from the membrane and fuse to their targets; and Dr Thomas C Südhof along with his colleagues revealed how calcium ions could instruct vesicles to fuse and discharge their contents with precision. These enabled the biotechnology industry to produce a variety of pharmaceutical and industrial products like insulin and hepatitis B vaccines, in a cost-efficient manner, using yeast and tissue cultured cells.
Department of Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai 400 005, India, krishanu@tifr.res.in.
Krishanu
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Ray
D001692:Biological Transport / Q000502:physiology*; D012634:Bodily Secretions / Q000502:physiology*; D002118:Calcium; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D009613:Nobel Prize; D010827:Physiology; D022161:Transport Vesicles / Q000502:physiology*
D002118:Calcium