SCIENCE UP THE WORLD
15TH INTERNATIONAL STUDENT CONGRESS OF MEDICAL SCIENCES
JUNE 3RD - 6TH 2008
Prof. dr. Günter Blobel
Cell biologist, M.D., Ph.D., John D. Rockefeller Jr. Professor at The Rockefeller University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator
Cell biologist Günter Blobel received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1999 for his revolutionary research on the inner workings of the cell. He discovered a “zip code”system for protein distribution. After some time proteins suffer damage and then they need to be replaced. The zip code explains how newly made proteins are transported from the ribosomes to the proper organelle or out of the cell.Each newly made protein has an organelle-specific address, this can been seen as a signal sequence that is recognized by an organelle’s receptors. Some proteins have to be woven into a cellular membrane and each in a specific way. This happens also by signals in the proteins. Blobel and his colleages also found out that the binding of the signal sequence to the receptor of the endoplasmatic reticulum causes a watery channel in the membrane to open so the protein can travel. Blobel is now working on identifying more of these channels in other organelles.
