Susumu Tonegawa

Susumu Tonegawa (利根川 進 Tonegawa Susumu, born September 6, 1939) is a Japanese scientist who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for his discovery of the genetic mechanism that produces antibody diversity. Although he won the Nobel Prize for his work in immunology, Tonegawa is a molecular biologist by training. In his later years, he has turned his attention to the molecular and cellular basis of memory formation.

Tonegawa is best known for figuring out the genetic mechanism of the adaptive immune system. One early idea was that each gene produces one protein. There are under 19,000 genes in the human body. However, the human body can produce millions of antibodies. Tonegawa showed in experiments beginning in 1976, genetic material rearranges itself to form millions of antibodies. Comparing the DNA of B cells (a type of white blood cell) in embryonic and adult mice, he observed that genes in the mature B cells of the adult mice are moved around, recombined, and deleted to form the diversity of the variable region of antibodies.

List of Nobel laureates

The Nobel Prizes (Swedish: Nobelpriset, Norwegian: Nobelprisen) are prizes awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institute, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. They were established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, which dictates that the awards should be administered by the Nobel Foundation. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was established in 1968 by the Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, for contributions to the field of economics. Each recipient, or "laureate", receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money, which is decided by the Nobel Foundation, yearly.

Prize

Each prize is awarded by a separate committee; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Economics, the Karolinska Institute awards the Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the Prize in Peace. Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award that has varied throughout the years. In 1901, the recipients of the first Nobel Prizes were given 150,782 SEK, which is equal to 7,731,004 SEK in December 2007. In 2008, the laureates were awarded a prize amount of 10,000,000 SEK. The awards are presented in Stockholm in an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

Learning & Memory

Learning & Memory is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the neurobiology of learning and memory. It was established in 1994 and is published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. The editor-in-chief is John H. Byrne (University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston).

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in the Science Citation Index, Current Contents/Life Sciences, The Zoological Record, BIOSIS Previews,PsychINFO,Scopus, and Index Medicus/MEDLINE/PubMed. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2012 impact factor of 4.057.

References

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