As the annual Nobel Prize is coming soon, the world’s attention will once again focus on Stockholm. Everyone in the academic community is concerned about who’s going to be the winner. According to our own understanding, we today would like to share with you the prediction of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
This section of Nobel Prize consists of two parts, physiology (refers to the fundamentals) and medicine (refers to the applications). At the beginning, many award winning programs were medicine-related, but now physiology takes the main position by a ratio of eight to two.
Physiology—the Fundamentals
The fundamentals will continue to be the focus of the awards, covering the areas of biochemistry, cell biology, molecular genetics, immunology, neuroscience, interdisciplinary, etc.
1. miRNA
miRNA is the hottest topic of this year’s Prize. VictorAmbros, Gary Bruce Ruvkun and other related scientists are the most promising candidates. We just need to look at the great sum of fund put into this field and the huge number of papers about this topic. Moreover, it has been 20 years since its discovery, and this is also an average number of years for basic research. Therefore, it should be the first candidate.
2. Nuclear Receptor
The discovery of nuclear receptor provides a new understanding for the mechanism of many endocrine hormones on the one hand. On the other hand, it complements the signal transduction pathway (cells, cell membranes and intracellular have been awarded, only nuclei left). Top candidates include Pierre Chambon and RonaldMark Evans.
3. Epigenetics
Epigenetics is one of the hottest fields in life sciences. It contributes massive papers and spends fantastic amounts of money, so it is also worth the expectation. DNA methylation by Howard Cedar and Aharon Razin as well as the histone acetylation by Charles David Allis are important options.
4. Circadian Rhythm
Circadian rhythm is a sheer basic topic that explains one of the most fundamental molecular mechanisms of the phenomenon of life sciences. Jeffrey C.Hall, MichaelRosbash and Michael W. Young have madegreat contributions.
5. Others
In addition to the above hot topics, other projects are also promising in 2015 and the years to come, including the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response by Peter Walter and KazutoshiMori, autophagy by Yoshinori Ohsumi, etc.
In the next post, we will continue the predictions in medicine—the applications.