The 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Click on the miniature images below to see enlarged images. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded for discoveries concerning the cardiovascular system, i.e. the heart and blood vessels. However, the principles have turned out to be important also in other parts of the…

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A chromosome having the standard sequence of regions labelled 1 to 7, inclusive, is shown on the left. If a segment labelled 2 and 3 becomes inverted then the new configuration shown on the right is called an inversion. When the standard and inverted chromosomes pair with one another the result is a chromosome loop…

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8. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Nobel Laureate studied a disease called kuru which spread among the Fore people in New Guinea through cannibalistic rituals. Kuru means shivering or trembling in the Fore language. The picture, taken by Gajdusek in 1957, shows an 8-year old girl in an advanced stage of kuru.

6. This microscopic picture shows a histological section from a prion-infected brain. (1) Vacuoles that are formed as a result of neuronal cell death, results in a sponge-like appearance of the brain.  

NOBELFÖRSAMLINGEN KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET THE NOBEL ASSEMBLY AT THE KAROLINSKA INSTITUTE 6 October 1997 has today decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1997 to Stanley B. Prusiner for his discovery of “Prions – a new biological principle of infection”. Summary The 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to…

2. When a cow is fed with offals derived from a PrPSc-infected sheep, prions are somehow taken up from the gut and transported to the brain. The details of this process are not yet known, but one likely scenario is that PrPSc enters a nerve ending (synapse) from where it is transported along the nerve…