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“I think a Prize will come out of the field of aging. Studies of model organisms have made it clear that aging is a regulated process. When insulin and reproductive signaling are perturbed in worms, for example, animals live up to six times longer than normal. A clear understanding of how and why organisms age seems to be within reach, and achieving this goal should take the Prize—particularly if it results in effective pharmacological interventions. ”

“My best guess is that the Nobel Prize will go to someone who figures out how to selectively impair vascular growth in solid tumors. Success in this area would have broad implications for treatments that would produce few side effects.”

“The Nobel should go to the discoveries of DNA topoisomerase and telomerase, which solve two of the most fundamental problems in biology: how to unravel the condensed spiral structure of DNA, and how to overcome the loss of DNA ends during the transmission of genetic information. Not only are these discoveries important for understanding all life forms, they are also directly relevant to human diseases. Inhibitors of topoisomerases are used in the clinic, and inhibitors of telomerases are in clinical trials, both for the treatment of cancer.”

“One of my top choices would be the determination of the ribosome crystal structures. It was a tour de force because ribosomes, the machines responsible for synthesizing practically all proteins in the cell, are some of the largest asymmetric particles to be visualized at atomic resolution. Plus, the structures revealed that ribosomes are ribozymes (RNA-based enzymes), supporting the RNA World hypothesis that RNA begets proteins.”