Gen'Anne'tics

NOBEL PRIZE ANNOUNCEMENT!

Congratulations to the winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine:

John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka are the joint winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.

Check out this article for more information on pluripotent stem cells and these two scientist’s contribution to medicine:

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2012/advanced-medicineprize2012.pdf

Personal note:

I do think that the Nobel committee should have included Dr. James Thomson on this shared award. He was the first to derive human embryonic stem cells, and he and Dr. Yamanaka each published the iPS results in the same issue of Nature on work they had been doing simultaneously.  Both recipients are very deserving, but Dr. Thomson made significant contributions to this field of research, in a manner deserving of recognition.