Israelis, American Awarded Nobel
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STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Two Israelis and an American won the Nobel Prize in chemistry yesterday for showing how cells can give a “kiss of death” to destroy unwanted proteins, a finding that could help scientists find new medicines for cancer and other diseases. The award marks the first time an Israeli has won a Nobel science prize.
Israelis Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko and American Irwin Rose were cited for revealing a process that gives doomed proteins a chemical label and then chops them up.
That process in turn governs such key tasks as cell division, DNA repair, and quality control of newly produced proteins, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science said in awarding the prize. If it goes wrong, diseases like cervical cancer can result, the academy said.
The protein-destroying process the scientists discovered was completely unexpected, because scientists had thought such destruction was not regulated, said LarsThelander, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
