Thomson Reuters, which has been predicting the Nobel Winners for more than 10 years, released its annual list of potential winners Wednesday.
The media outlet has successfully predicted 27 wins using data from the Web Of Science website, including how many times a given set of scientific literature has been cited — the more times a paper is cited, the more important and influential the work.
That doesn't mean these are the only contestants — there are other dark horse candidates that may not have made this list.
The Nobel prizes will be announced Oct. 7-14.
CHEMISTRY: A. Paul Alivisatos, Chad A. Mirkin, and Nadrian "Ned" C. Seeman for their contributions to the field of DNA Nanotechnology. Together, they've worked to design tiny objects made with DNA with applications in fields like nano-medicine.
A Paul Alivisatos is the Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the
University of California, Berkeley.
Chad A. Mirkin is a professor at Northwestern University.
Nadrian C. Seeman is at New York University.
DNA is the molecule that makes up your genome. But it can also be manipulated to create tiny physical structures. That's where nanotechnology comes in. Tiny robots made of DNA can be used to move and control other tiny objects.
Supposedly Seeman was inspired to develop the field in the fall of 1980, while at a pub, inspired by the M. C. Escher woodcut "Depth." He envisioned using DNA to make a lattice-like structure that could support other larger molecules so that scientists could work with them. He didn't achieve that goal until 2009.
Why use DNA instead of another molecule? Strands of DNA fit together in a very specific way, since individual "base pairs"— the A, T, G, and C — can only bind to each other.
When they bind, these strands form strong, rigid structures.
Because we understand how these base pairs fit together, we can design DNA structures that will self-assemble based on these rules.
These DNA objects can even be changed after they are created, turning them into molecular robots.
CHEMISTRY: Bruce N. Ames for the invention of a test to determine how likely a compound is to create mutations, called the Ames test.
Bruce N Ames is affiliated with Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and the University of California, Berkeley.
The Ames test easily and cheaply determines how "mutagenic" a compound is. These compounds could be anything from a new drug or a food additive, to a cleaning product or hair dye. If a compound is mutagenic, it's more likely to cause cancer, because a buildup of mutations is what makes cells form tumors.
The test uses the salmonella bacteria, which is much easier to manipulate and grow in the lab than animals are. The bacteria rely on a compound called histidine to thrive, because they have a mutated gene. In the lab, the bacteria are grown in the compound to be tested without histidine. If the bacteria are able to mutate back into their natural state and thrive without histidine, the compound they were exposed to is likely to be mutagenic, and have pushed the bacteria to make more mutations. Those mutations let it survive without histidine.
His findings using this test even led to some chemicals being withdrawn from commercial products.
Eventually, using his findings that man-made compounds aren't necessarily any worse than "natural" chemicals to argue against pesticide bans, led to a split with environmentalist groups.
CHEMISTRY: M.G. Finn, Valery V. Fokin, and K. Barry Sharpless for the development of a type of reaction that quickly and reliably joins small units together to form desired substances.
M.G. Finn is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Valery V. Fokin and K. Barry Sharpless are researchers at The Scripps Research Institute.
The quick creation of substances by joining together smaller units is called "modular click chemistry." These types of reactions are meant to mimic how proteins and other compounds are put together in cells — at body temperature and normal pH — without making any toxic byproducts.
Often these natural reactions use enzymes, very specific proteins that fit like a lock and key onto the compounds they are changing. In these reactions there is only one favored outcome.
Click chemistry is an overarching idea or approach — one that could be used in countless applications from drug discovery and nanotechnology to applications in the lab when doing other research.
The idea was described by Sharpless in 2001. If selected, this would be Sharpless’ second Nobel Prize — he won the Chemistry prize in 2001. The Scripps institute owns a cadre of patents on the idea.
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