Three Scientists Win Nobel Prize in

Chemistry

Three scientists have won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for their work to simplify
and improve the imaging of biomolecules.

Goran Hansson is Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He

announced the names of the winners Wednesday from the groups headquarters in
Stockholm.

"The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2017 Nobel
Prize in Chemistry jointly to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard
Henderson.

Hansson said the scientists were being recognized for what he described as a cool
method for imaging the molecules of life.

Jacques Dubochet works at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Joachim Frank

is with Columbia University in the United States. Richard Henderson is with Britains
Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

The three scientists developed a way to create three-dimensional (3D) images of

biological molecules images with height, width and depth. Their method is called
cryo-electron microscopy.

The Royal Swedish Academy described cryo-electron microscopy as decisive for

both the basic understanding of lifes chemistry and for the development of new
medicines.

Scientists long believed that electron microscopes could only be used to study
non-living things. The reason? Their powerful electron beam destroys biological
material. But cryo-technology freezes the biological material, keeping it at extremely
low temperatures. This protects it from damage.

The power of the technology could be seen in the Zika crisis last year. Zika virus was
linked to an increase in brain-damaged babies in Brazil. The virus spreads when an
infected mosquito bites a pregnant woman.

As concerns about Zika spread, scientists turned to cryo-electronic microscopy to

make 3-D images of the virus at the atomic level. This helped researchers as they
worked to create drugs and vaccines.
The Nobel committee noted Wednesday that, in 1990, Henderson used an electron
microscope to produce a 3-D image of a protein at atomic-level resolution.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Frank developed mathematical models to sharpen images
from such microscopes.

Dubochet added water to electron microscopy. He cooled water so quickly that it

solidified in its liquid form around biological material. The process formed a kind of
glass instead of ice. As a result, the biomolecules were able to keep their natural
shape.

The three scientists will share the $1.1 million prize.

The Nobel prizes are named after the Swedish engineer Alfred Nobel. He was the
inventor of dynamite, an explosive.

Nobel left $9,000,000 in his will to establish yearly prizes. He said they should go to
living people who have worked most effectively to improve human life. The first
awards were presented in 1901.

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Words in This Story

academy /kd..mi/ - n. a school, usually place of higher learning; a society or
group of learned persons

beam /bim/ -- n. a line or energy or light

mosquito /mski.t/ -- n. an insect