Chemistry Nobel Prize...

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Robert J. Lefkowitz

Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA

and

Brian K. Kobilka

Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

"for studies of G-protein–coupled receptors"

Smart receptors on cell surfaces

Your body is a fine-tuned system of interactions between billions of cells. Each cell has tiny receptors that enable it to sense its environment, so it can adapt to new situtations. Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka are awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for groundbreaking discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family of such receptors: G-protein–coupled receptors.

For a long time, it remained a mystery how cells could sense their environment. Scientists knew that hormones such as adrenalin had powerful effects: increasing blood pressure and making the heart beat faster. They suspected that cell surfaces contained some kind of recipient for hormones. But what these receptors actually consisted of and how they worked remained obscured for most of the 20th Century.

Nobel Prize: Nobel Prize in Chemistry Press Release