Sydney Brenner

Facts

Sydney Brenner

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Sydney Brenner
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2002

Born: 13 January 1927, Germiston, South Africa

Died: 5 April 2019, Singapore

Affiliation at the time of the award: The Molecular Sciences Institute, Berkeley, CA, USA

Prize motivation: “for their discoveries concerning genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death'”

Prize share: 1/3

Work

At the beginning of an organism's life, the number of cells it contains increases rapidly. New cells are formed throughout its lifetime, but cells also die in order to maintain a balance in the number of cells in existence. This process is regulated by genes and is called programmed cell death. Groundbreaking in the understanding of this phenomenon were studies on the development of the small roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, conducted by Sydney Brenner in the mid-1970s. Brenner's work made it possible to link genetic analysis to cell division and organ formation.

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