For members of the global scientific community, the Nobel Prizes bring special excitement every year in anticipating just which of the many breakthroughs in biology, chemistry, and physics would be celebrated and publicly recognized this time around. As a life sciences school, we particularly look forward to the announcement of the prize for Physiology or Medicine, which often serves to reignite our passion, validate our choices, and stimulate interest in areas of research and thinking that we may not have paid the most attention to before. However, going by this year’s Nobel Prizes, we should spare more than an ear for the announcement of the prizes awarded in Chemistry and Physics as well.
All three of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences this year share deep connections with biology and biological research. James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo shared the prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on discovering negative regulators of immune cells and inhibiting them in order to unleash the substantial firepower of the immune system to act against cancer cells. Frances H. Arnold won half of the prize in Chemistry for employing principles from evolution to develop enzymes with improved and novel functions for industrial and biomedical applications, while the other half went to George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter for developing the phage display, a protein screening method that is often used in the directed evolution of proteins. The Nobel Prize in Physics was split between Arthur Ashkin, who developed optical tweezers from lasers and has used them to understand biological systems, and Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland for developing high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses that enabled laser surgeries among other applications. Alongside their ties to the life sciences, the three Nobel Prizes share a common theme of taking a known concept or principle far beyond its usual application. They harness our understanding of complex phenomena such as evolution, adaptive immunity, and electromagnetic radiation to unlock new avenues of innovation and application.
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| James P. Allison Tasuku Honjo |
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| Frances H. Arnold George P. Smith Sir Gregory P. Winter |
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| Donna Strickland Gerard Mourou Arthur Ashkin |
As is always the case, the Nobels also serve as key reminders of the value of basic science research. Years of research by hundreds of scientists on understanding evolutionary principles and the structure of biomolecules reached a zenith in the work of Frances H. Arnold. Phages – viruses that infect bacteria and a classic model system in genetics research – remain the gift that keeps on giving, finding new life as a tool that allows proteins to be displayed on structures that house the DNA encoding each protein. George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter realized that the rapid identification of the DNA sequence encoding a protein after selection of the protein for function or affinity could accelerate the screening and production process for commercial proteins such as antibodies. James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo’s discoveries demonstrate that no basic science research is ever very far from application to cancer. On a more serious note, inhibition of negative immune regulation builds on decades of work describing the minutiae of the seemingly endlessly complex vertebrate immune system. And while we are discussing the magic of basic science research, it is worth noting that Arthur Ashkin’s optical tweezers have allowed us to trap and follow RNA polymerase as it adds individual nucleotides while synthesizing the mRNA strand during transcription, and the ribosome as it moves along the mRNA strand during translation. Applications in delivering cargo to cells for treatment and sorting infected cells from healthy ones only add to the glory of this invention.
That all three of this year’s scientific Nobels have gone to developments born out of, or that led to major applications in biological research is probably not a coincidence. It is reflective of the exciting transitions and innovations that have been revolutionizing the field with increasing frequency since the birth of molecular biology. Knowledge begets knowledge, and draws the attention of other fields to employ or develop tools for further exploration. Many would have touted the gene-editing technology called CRISPR or the novel cancer immunotherapy of CAR-T cells, which trains one’s own immune cells to directly target cancer cells, as candidates for this year’s prize in Physiology or Medicine. But it seems like revolutions in biological research now occur often enough to warrant a waiting list. And sometimes, these innovations extend to or emerge from the other basic sciences.
The School of Life Sciences
Independent University, Bangladesh
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