American Kornberg wins Nobel Prize in chemistry

American scientist Roger Kornberg won the 2006 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for his work on a key process of life called genetic transcription.

Kornberg was awarded the prize "for his fundamental studies concerning how the information stored in the genes is copied, and then transferred to those parts of the cells that produce proteins," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in citation.

Kornberg was the first to create pictures of the gene transcription at the molecular level, in eukaryote, which is a single-celled or multicellular organism whose cells contain a distinct membrane-bound nucleus. Human beings falls into this category.

"Understanding of how transcription works also has a fundamental medical importance", the Royal Swedish Academy said in its citation,"Disturbances in the transcription process are involved in many human illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and various kinds of inflammation."

"If transcription stops, genetic information is no longer transferred into different parts of the body. Since these are no longer renewed, the organism dies within a few days," the Academy said.

"I was truly shaken by the news... I am still shaken," Kornberg told a news conference at the Academy by telephone.

Kornberg, 59, is now a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, and his father, Arthur Kornberg, took the Nobel prize for medicine in 1959, also for work in genetics.

Kornberg's award completed a clean sweep for the United States in the Nobel science prizes, with four other Americans taking home the medicine and physics awards earlier this week.

Kornberg and other 2006 Nobel laureates will receive a gold medal and a cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor (around 1.37 million dollars) at the formal prize ceremony held on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of the prize's creator Alfred Nobel.

Source: Xinhua