2017 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Hall, Rosbash and Young

The 2017 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young, recognizing their work on the molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms. Read on to learn more about their work, which created a paradigm shift in our understanding of the biological clock. In a nutshell This year’s laureates isolated a gene that controls normal daily biological rhythm, using the fruit fly as a model organism. They demonstrated that the gene encodes a protein that accumulates in the cell overnight, and is then degraded in the day. In turn, they also identified...