Tim hunt nobel prize biography of michael

An adult human comprises roughly 100 000 billion cells, all originating through division from a single fertilised egg cell. To do this, cells grow and duplicate their chromosomes before dividing into two cells.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2001 was divided evenly between Tim Hunt and Paul Nurse, both of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), UK, and the American Lee Hartwell for their “Discoveries of Key Regulators of the Cell Cycle”.

This was an important breakthrough, as defects in cell cycle control can lead to the type of chromosome alterations seen in cancer cells.

Tim hunt experiment

In the early 1980s Hunt discoved the first cyclin molecules, so named because the levels of these proteins oscillate during the cell cycle owing to selective destruction at the end of mitosis. The cyclins bind to the CDK (cyclin dependent kinase) molecules, turning on the CDK activity and selecting the proteins to be phosphorylated.

In fact, Tim Hunt discovered the cyclins bec