Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar were named as the
winners on Wednesday morning at a news conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
Their
work uncovered the mechanisms used by cells to repair damaged DNA - a
fundamental process in living cells and important in cancer.
Prof Lindahl is Swedish, but has worked in the UK for more than three decades.
The prize money of eight million Swedish kronor (£634,000; $970,000) will be shared among the winners.
"It
was a surprise. I know that over the years I've occasionally been
considered for a prize, but so have hundreds of other people. I feel
lucky and proud to be selected today," Tomas Lindahl, from the UK's
Francis Crick Institute, told journalists.
Claes Gustafsson, from
the Nobel Committee, said the recipients had "explained the processes at
the molecular level that guard the integrity of our genomes".
Monitoring and repair
DNA is open to an onslaught of different phenomena that can generate defects in our genomes.
UV
radiation and molecules known as free radicals can cause damage.
Furthermore, defects can arise when DNA is copied during cell division -
a process that occurs millions of times each day in our bodies.
"Cigarette
smoke contains small reactive chemicals, which bind to the DNA and
prevent it from being replicated properly - so they are mutagens. And
once there is damage in the DNA this can cause diseases including
cancer," said Prof Lindahl, who for 20 years ran the Clare Hall
laboratories in Hertfordshire - now part of Cancer Research UK.
To
address those defects, a host of molecular systems continuously monitor
and de-bug our genetic information. The three new laureates mapped in
detail how some of these mechanisms worked.
In the 1970s, scientists had thought that DNA was a stable molecule,
but Prof Lindahl demonstrated that it decays at a surprisingly fast
rate.
This led him to discover a mechanism called base excision repair, which perpetually counteracts the degradation of DNA.
Sir
Martyn Poliakoff, vice president of the UK's Royal Society, said:
"Understanding the ways in which DNA repairs itself is fundamental to
our understanding of inherited genetic disorders and of diseases like
cancer.
"The important work that Royal Society Fellow Tomas
Lindahl has done has helped us gain greater insight into these essential
processes."
Turkish-born biochemist Aziz Sancar, professor at the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, US, uncovered a different
DNA mending process called nucleotide excision repair. This is the
mechanism cells use to repair damage to DNA from UV light - but it can
also undo genetic defects caused in other ways.
People born with defects in this repair system are extremely sensitive to sunlight, and at risk of developing skin cancer.
The
American Paul Modrich, professor of biochemistry at Duke University in
North Carolina, demonstrated how cells correct flaws that occur as DNA
is copied when cells divide. This mechanism, called mismatch repair,
results in a 1,000-fold reduction in the error frequency when DNA is
replicated.
The president of the American Chemical Society, Dr Diane Grob
Schmidt, was up early to hear the announcement. She told BBC News that
the winners were "three outstanding individuals".
Dr Schmidt was
also quick to dispel any suggestion that the winning research was more
biology than chemistry: "The making and breaking of these bonds is
chemistry - in a biological context.
"I think, because of the implications and potential impact of unravelling these mechanisms, that it's a great choice."
The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded on Tuesday to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald for their work on neutrinos.
The
first of the 2015 Nobel Prizes, for physiology or medicine, was awarded
on Monday by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet. It was shared
by researchers who developed pioneering drugs against parasitic
diseases.
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