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Chemists get Nobel prize for work on cell membranes

Americans Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their research on how key materials enter or leave the cells in the body.

The pair received the award for their discoveries concerning tiny pores called "channels" on the surface of cells, the Royal Swedish Academy said yesterday.

Agre, 54, is part of the staff at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and MacKinnon, 47, is part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of The Rockefeller University in New York.

Agre was cited for his work in 1988 for isolating a membrane protein that, a year or so later, he realized must be the long-sought-after water channel.

"These are discoveries that are of fundamental importance for the understanding of life processes, not just among humans and higher organisms, but also for bacteria and plants," said Bengt Norden, chairman of the Nobel Committee for chemistry.

The discovery opened the door to a whole series of biochemical, physiological and genetic studies of water channels in bacteria, plants and mammals. Today, researchers can follow in detail a water molecule on its way through the cell membrane and understand why only water, not other small molecules or ions, can pass, the academy said.

Economics

American Robert F. Engle and Briton Clive W.J. Granger won the 2003 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their use of statistical methods for economic time series, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

The academy said the research is used to gather data for time series, such as chronological observations or for estimating relationships and testing hypotheses in economic theory.

"Such time series show the development of (gross domestic product), prices, interest rates, stock prices, etc.," the citation said.

Engle, 60, is on faculty at New York University and Granger, 69, is at the University of California at San Diego.

Their findings are important because on financial markets, random fluctuations and volatility can affect share prices and value, along with other financial instruments.

They will share the prize worth 10 million kronor (US$1.3 million).

The economics prize is the only award not established in the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. It was established separately in 1968 by the Swedish central bank, although it is grouped with the other awards.

Past awards have recognized research on topics ranging from poverty and famine to how multinational corporations reap profits, and theories on how people choose jobs and the welfare losses caused by environmental catastrophes.

Two Americans -- Daniel Kahneman, 68, a US and Israeli citizen based at Princeton University in New Jersey and Vernon L. Smith, 75, of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia -- won last year's prize for pioneering the use of psychological and experimental economics in decision-making to make markets safer.

The medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace prizes were first awarded in 1901.
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