Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California was named the Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine for discovering how chromosomes are protected. The trio found that chromosome-capping telomere and the enzyme telomerase protect chromosomes as cells divide. Blackburn will share one-third of the $1.4 million prize with Carol Greider of Johns Hopkins University and Jack Szostak of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Blackburn and Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation while Blackburn and Greider identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA.

Blackburn is the fourth UCSF Nobel Prize winner, joining Stanley Prusiner, Harold Varmus and former chancellor J. Michael Bishop.

Congratulations to Elizabeth Blackburn for sharing what she knows and for winning the Nobel Prize. She really deserved it!

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Tags: Carol Greider, Elizabeth Blackburn, Jack Szostak, Nobel Prize