Nobel Win for Pioneering Work in Aging and Disease

Aussie biologist wins Nobel prize


Pioneering work in ageing and disease

Win is a first for an Australian woman
MOLECULAR biologist Elizabeth Blackburn has become the first Australian woman to win a Nobel prize.
Professor Blackburn, whose pioneering work on telomeres - protective caps on the ends of chromosomes - has opened up new lines of inquiry into growth, ageing and disease, is the 2009 Nobel laureate for physiology or medicine, The Australian reports.

Professor Blackburn's work with psychologists on telomeres, stress-related disease and meditation has given tantalising evidence of the connection between mind and body.


Learn more about Professor Blackburn's breakthrough and how it affects your life.

She will share the 10 million Swedish kroner ($1.6 million) Nobel award with Carol Greider and Jack W. Szostak, the Nobel assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced last night.

She is only the ninth woman to be awarded the physiology or medicine prize since its inception in 1909, and only the 36th female Nobel laureate in any category since 1901, when the first prizes were awarded in chemistry, physics, medicine and peace.

The first was Marie Curie, who won the prize in 1903 and whom Professor Blackburn said inspired her to become a scientist.

But Nobel committee secretary Goeran Hansson said gender played no part in the decision.

"They're not being honoured because they are women. They are being honoured because they've made a fundamentally important discovery," he told Swedish news agency TT.

That discovery was made 25 years ago, but even at that moment Professor Blackburn knew she was onto something big. "I felt very excited ... and I thought this is very interesting, this is a very important result, and you don't often feel that," she said.

Professor Greider, 48, who was doing some laundry when the Nobel people called, said she was "just thrilled" when she was told she had won the award. "I just think that the recognition for curiosity-driven basic science is very, very nice," she said.
Professor Blackburn, 60, grew up in Tasmania and took science degrees at the University of Melbourne, but is now based in the US.

Speaking about her work to The New York Times recently, she said: "As the ends of the chromosomes wear down, the telomerase comes in and builds them back up.
"In humans, the thing is that as we mature, our telomeres slowly wear down. So the question has always been: did that matter? Well, more and more, it seems like it matters.
"In my lab, we're finding that psychological stress actually ages cells, which can be seen when you measure the wearing down of the tips of the chromosomes, those telomeres."
Read more on this story at The Australian.