Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
Related Articles
They harnessed the power of evolution to produce novel proteins Two Americans and a Briton won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for harnessing the power of evolution to produce novel proteins used in everything from environmentally friendly detergents and biofuels to cancer drugs. The fruits of this work include the world’s top-selling prescription medicine — the antibody injection Humira for treating rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. Frances Arnold of the California Institute of Technology, George Smith from the University of Missouri and Gregory Winter of Britain’s MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology were awarded the prize for pioneering science in enzymes and antibodies. Ms. Arnold, only the fifth woman to win a chemistry Nobel, was awarded half of the $1 million prize while Mr. Smith and Mr. Winter shared the other half. Ms. Arnold is the second woman to win a Nobel prize this year after Canada’s Donna Strickland. Her research on enzymes led to the development of better industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Mr. Smith developed a method using a virus that infects bacteria to produce new proteins while Ms. Winter used the same technique for the directed evolution of antibodies.
Source : https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/trio-gets-chemistry-nobel/article25117063.ece
