Till startsidan
Friday 9 January, 2009
NEW POSTAL ADRESS
Business Region Göteborg AB
Box 111 19
SE-404 23 Göteborg
Sweden
Visiting address
Norra Hamngatan 14
Phone: +46 31 61 24 02
Fax: +46 31 61 24 01
Nobel Prize Laureate Andrew Fire speaks in Göteborg May 28-29
Professor Andres Fire, 2006 Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology or Medicine gives two lectures in Göteborg.
The Nobel Prize  Laureates of 2006 discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information.

Our genome operates by sending instructions for the manufacture of proteins from DNA in the nucleus of the cell to the protein synthesizing machinery in the cytoplasm. These instructions are conveyed by messenger RNA (mRNA).

In 1998, the American scientists Andrew Fire and Craig Mello published their discovery of a mechanism that can degrade mRNA from a specific gene. This mechanism, RNA interference, is activated when RNA molecules occur as double-stranded pairs in the cell. Double-stranded RNA activates biochemical machinery which degrades those mRNA molecules that carry a genetic code identical to that of the double-stranded RNA. When such mRNA molecules disappear, the corresponding gene is silenced and no protein of the encoded type is made.

More information on the lectures

Updated: 20070514