Elizabeth Blackburn wins Nobel Prize

Elizabeth Blackburn

Elizabeth Blackburn was declared as the Nobel Prize victor in Physiology or medicine for discovering how chromosomes are protected and will be sharing 1/3 of the $1.4 million prize to Jack Szostak of Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Massachusetts General hospital and Carol Greider of John Hopkins University.

The 61 year old Elizabeth Blackburn is an instructor of Physiology and Biology at the University of California, San Francisco. She received her PhD at the University of Cambridge in 1975 and was a researcher at the Yale University.

Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered or determined by scientific observation that a radically distinctive DNA sequence in the telomeres shields the chromosomes from degradation while Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn have identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA.

Their new discoveries created a great significance on cancer research as well as the research into aging and other illness.