Nobel chemistry prizes at work
Nobel Prize-winning chemists are meeting in Lindau this week. But what did these scientists gain their prizes for? These photographs present examples of Nobel prize-winning chemistry in everyday life.
Where can we find the chemistry behind a Nobel Prize?
Chemists awarded the Nobel Prize are meeting in Lindau on Lake Constance this week. But many people are not aware of what these scientists earned their prizes for. We'd like to change that. Our gallery of photographs presents examples of where you can find Nobel prize-winning chemistry in everyday life.
G-protein-coupled receptors for taste
Billions of them can be found in our bodies. Receptors blanket the surface of every single cell. They enable cells to recognize their surroundings, to move and to communicate with other cells. G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are important because they allow us to taste and smell. Brian Kobilka won the 2012 Nobel Prize for his research into this family of proteins.
Factories of life
The genetic building block, DNA, provides the assembly instructions for the individual components of a cell - components made by tiny 'factories' called ribosomes. Society has specialists for daily chores, but ribosomes produce thousands of different components. How these factories work was discovered by Ada Yonath, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize.
Reading the human genome
It took 13 years to sequence the entire human genome. The result: Three billion components, some 20,000 genes. These make human beings what they are. This result is also due to the work of Walter Gilbert and Fred Sanger, who earned the 1980 Nobel Prize for their methodology for precisely sequencing DNA.
Power plant in a leaf
On any tree in any forest we can witness it: photosynthesis, arguably the most important chemical reaction on Earth. Plants, algae and bacteria absorb huge amounts of CO² with the aid of sunlight to produce oxygen. Certain protein molecules inside the cells make it possible. Robert Huber, Hartmut Michel and Johann Deisenhofer studied this mechanism, earning the 1988 Nobel Prize for their work.
Light in the dark
What is shimmering here is the jellyfish Aequorea victoria. Its green fluorescent protein can be found in many biological processes. One of the pioneers to unlock this technology was Martin Chalfie, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize. He marked cell components of a round worm with the glowing protein, which ultimately led scientists to a better understanding of how nerve cells function.
Water for the cell
Pipes are used to channel water into a house, and likewise, to dispose of the waste water. The supply of water to our cells functions in a similar fashion, as Peter Agre illustrated in1988. He won the Nobel Prize in 2003 for his discovery of a protein that regulates the transport of water through the cell membrane. The principle is universal and applies to humans, animals, plants and bacteria.
Movement thanks to ATP
What coal, solar energy or nuclear power are to us, is adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for our cells. Without this universal 'energy currency', we would not be able to tense up or relax our muscles.. An adult human uses half his weight in ATP every day. In 1997, Sir John Walker was awarded the Nobel Prize because he explained how the ATP molecule was produced in the cell.
'Green' Chemistry
Protecting the environment, saving energy and reducing the use of raw materials - that is the goal of green chemistry. That aim is no longer utopic, thanks to Robert Grubbs, Richard Schock and Yves Chauvin. They won the 2005 Nobel Prize for discovering an efficient, non-polluting way to make complex chemical compounds; for example, for the drug industry, by rebuilding existing natural compounds.
The 'soccer ball molecule'
If you've never heard of a fullerene, you could probably easily conceive of its structure: just think of a soccer ball, which is made up of interlocking pentagons and hexagons. It's in this design that 60 carbon atoms form a fullerene. For describing the structure of a fullerene, Robert Curl Jr., Sir Harold Kroto und Richard Smalley received the Nobel Prize in 1996.
Saving the ozone layer
Thanks to the ozone layer, we need just some sunscreen to be able to enjoy the sensation of the sun on our bare skin, as it filters out most of the damaging ultraviolet rays from the sun. It's due to Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland that we know nitrous gases and chloroflourocarbons are causing destruction of the ozone layer. They received the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1995.
Magnetic resonance for diagnosis
Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI scanning, can produce detailed images of the heart, the brain, bones and other organs and body parts, which can help for example in detecting tumors. High-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy set the basis for such imaging - for his role in developing this process, Richart Ernst received the Nobel Prize in 1991.
Quasicrystal for frying
Next time you break an egg into a frying pan, think of the discovery by Dan Shechtman: quasicrystal. The existence of this substance was long disputed, and Shechtman received the Nobel Prize in 2011 for proving that it does exist. Structured like a mosaic, quasicrystal could soon be found in the kitchen, as it represents an alternative to Teflon as an anti-stick cooking surface.