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Volume 12, No. 1, Spring 02 | Return to Table of Contents
MBL Corporation Member Tim Hunt Wins 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for Discovery of Cyclins Made in an MBL Course
Marine Biological Laboratory Corporation Member R. Timothy (Tim) Hunt of Cancer Research UK, Clare Hall Laboratories, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on October 8, 2001, for discoveries made while teaching and conducting research in an MBL course in 1982. The 2001 Nobel Prize honored Hunt, Leland Hartwell, and Paul Nurse for their identification of “key regulators of the cell cycle.”
Hunt was recognized for his discovery of cyclins, proteins that figure prominently in the cascade of events that regulate the cell cycle, the process by which cells, including the billions that make up the human body, grow and divide.
“Defects in cell cycle control may lead to the type of chromosome alterations seen in cancer cells,” the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet explained in a press release. “This may, in the long term, open new possibilities for cancer treatment.”
Hunt discovered the unusual behavior of the proteins he later dubbed cyclins while conducting lab work for the MBL’s Physiology course. Students were on hand to take part in the excitement of “breaking” science. Using fertilized eggs of sea urchins, Hunt and his students found that the protein accumulated as cells prepared to divide and then disappeared as they actually divided. The protein, cyclin, turned out to be a key regulator of cell division.
With transparent eggs and embryos, marine organisms like sea urchins are uniquely suited for studies of cell division. As eggs from these organisms develop, they offer biologists a clear view of the processes that enable a single cell to give rise to a complete organism—processes common to all multicellular organisms—including sea urchins and humans. |
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