Breakthrough Prizes Recognize Geneticists, Big Bang Researchers

Among this year’s winners are a geneticist who revealed how plants respond to shade and a group of physicists who mapped the universe’s background radiation.

Written byCatherine Offord

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breakthrough Geneticist Kim Nasmyth with Mila Kunis and Ashton KutcherGETTY IMAGES, JESSE GRANT

A total of $22 million was awarded to researchers in math, physics, and the life sciences at the sixth annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony on Sunday (December 3). The largest group of researchers being recognized was a multi-institution team of 27 physicists who helped map radiation emitted just after the big bang around than 13.8 billion years ago.

Winners of the five $3 million life sciences prizes included University of Oxford geneticist Kim Nasmyth, whose work on yeast revealed proteins involved in cell regulation; Don Cleveland of the University of California, San Diego, who helped develop gene-silencing technology; and Joanne Chory of the Salk Institute in San Diego, for her work on plants’ genetic responses to being shaded by their neighbors.

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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