“Everyone Believed Cell Receptors Existed, But Chemistry Nobelists Figured Out That They Actually Did”
I love that headline from Colin Schultz at Smithsonian. Scientists knew that there was any number of ways for cells to transmit signals from their environment (over great distances throughout the body) to their insides (where signaling cascades would begin and the expression of genes would be turned on or off). They just had no clue what those signaling stations actually were, or how they worked. This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka, whose decades of work helped describe perhaps the most important class: G protein-coupled receptors.
These receptors, as a family, are ubiquitous in human cells. Thanks to the scientists that have described their workings so well, they are the targets for more than 40% of drugs on the market today.
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