A signal honour
The 2012 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded to Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors. Phillip Broadwith looks at the molecular machinery underpinning cell signalling
The story of some Nobel prizes starts with a single eureka moment, an epiphany that shifts the course of a particular researcher’s enquiries in new directions. Not so for this year’s prize in chemistry.
The struggle to understand and visualise the complexity of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and their effects on almost every cell of our bodies has taken decades. The steps along the way have, at times, been agonisingly small; each fragment of progress has had to be pieced together until the picture finally began to emerge.
It has taken extraordinary passion, commitment and dogged determination on the part of both this year’s laureates, Robert Lefkowitz of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University in Durham, US, and Brian Kobilka of Stanford University, US, as well as their many students and collaborators.