Devolution

Award Season

Posted by James Wed, 04 Oct 2006 00:11:00 GMT

Ah, the beginning of October. Yet again, it's Nobel Prize announcement time. I love it how the Nobel Prize committe spread out the news over an entire week, so each category's recipient gets their own special day under the sun.

Yesterday, I was very pleased to hear that the discoverers of RNA interference won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. I first learned about RNAi in my upper division molecular biology class, and I thought that the experiment that demonstrated it's existence was rather elegant. RNAi, for those not yet in the know, is a phenomenon where if you introduce a double stranded RNA that contains identical sequence with an actively expressed gene, the dsRNA will interfere with the expression of said gene. The discovery was in fact by accident, and has great implications. Already there are companies trying to use RNAi to cure everything from AIDS to cancer. The significance of this phenomenon is so profound that the Nobel Prize was given only 8 years after its discovery. In contrast, Barbara McClintock had to wait over 40 years for her Nobel Prize.

Today, it was announced that John Mather and George Smoot won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their contribution in confirming theories about the Big Bang. A lot of people at Berkeley got really excited since both recieved their PhD here, and George Smoot is also a physics professor here at Berkeley. In fact, he is the 20th faculty of Berkeley to receive the Nobel Prize. He is now eligible to recieve his very own "NL" parking permit (Berkeley reserves the best parking on campus for "NL", ie. Nobel Laureate). So that's pretty cool.

I still remember the first time I heard about the Nobel Prize. I was three years old, talking a walk with my grandpa, and he told me that the highest award for scientists in the world is the Nobel Prize. I don't remember much from when I was three, but for some reason, I remember that conversation vividly. Ever since, I've had a fascination with all things Nobel Prize related. Is it possible that I'll have my chance one day? Hey, I'm still young... and I'm allowed to dream.