Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, Richard HendersonNOBEL MEDIA. III. N. ELMEHEDThe Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded this morning (October 4) to three scientists who developed cryo-electron microscopy, a method that allows scientists to freeze biomolecules and view them at atomic resolution. Using this technique, researchers have been able to study the structure of a variety of biological molecules, from proteins involved in circadian rhythms to the Zika virus.
Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson were announced the winners by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. “I think that this discovery that’s being recognized has huge potential and is broadly applicable across all scientific disciplines,” says Allison Campbell, the president of the American Chemical Society.
Henderson, a professor at the Molecular Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the U.K., produced the first high-resolution model of a protein, bacteriorhodopsin, using electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) in 1990. In 1995, he wrote an article in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics suggesting that this technique could one day be used to image biological molecules at atomic resolution. “At the time that it was written, people thought it was a bit optimistic,” says Peter Rosenthal ...
