2010-06-04

8 Scientists Share $3 Million in Prizes

Scientists competing to build humongous telescopes, elucidate the machinery by which brain cells signal each other and manipulate individual atoms and molecules into submicroscopic structures were among the winners of one of the richest prizes in science.

The neuroscience prize will also be shared three ways, by Thomas Südhof of the Stanford School of Medicine, Richard H. Scheller of Genentech and James E. Rothman of Yale for work on the molecular basis of nervous transmission. In the 1980s, Dr. Südhof and Dr. Scheller decoded the genes that control the functioning of tiny bubbles of fluid called vesicles, which send neurotransmitters across the synapses between cells. In particular, they found that a protein that senses calcium acts as a switch for transmission. Dr. Rothman investigated how the vesicles involved in a wide range of physiological activities are generated and fuse together.

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