FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | October 07, 2015

American Chemical Society’s president comments on award of 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7, 2015 — On behalf of the American Chemical Society (ACS), President Diane Grob Schmidt, Ph.D., congratulates today’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Tomas Lindahl, M.D., Ph.D., of Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory (U.K.), Paul Modrich, Ph.D., of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine and Aziz Sancar, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize “for having mapped, at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard the genetic information.”

“The 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognizes the critical role chemistry plays in repairing and replicating human DNA, which is the blueprint of life itself,” says Schmidt. “Understanding these processes will help us develop and design therapies to intervene when DNA errors are internally or externally caused. I extend my congratulations to all three of this year’s winners, and I am so proud that Sancar is a 29-year member of ACS.”

Sancar won the Distinguished Lecturer of 2001 award from the ACS North Carolina Section.

All of the winners have published articles in some of ACS’ more than 40 peer-reviewed journals. The articles are available from the contacts above.

These papers authored by the researchers are available for free from ACS until November 2:

Rate of chain breakage at apurinic sites in double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid
Tomas Lindahl, Annika Andersson
Biochemistry, 1972, 11 (19), pp 3618–3623; DOI: 10.1021/bi00769a019
Publication Date: September 1972

Heat-induced deamination of cytosine residues in deoxyribonucleic acid
Tomas Lindahl, Barbro Nyberg
Biochemistry, 1974, 13 (16), pp 3405–3410; DOI: 10.1021/bi00713a035
Publication Date: July 1974

Rate of depurination of native deoxyribonucleic acid
Tomas Lindahl, Barbro Nyberg
Biochemistry, 1972, 11 (19), pp 3610–3618; DOI: 10.1021/bi00769a018
Publication Date: September 1972

DNA Mismatch Repair:  Functions and Mechanisms
Ravi R. Iyer, Anna Pluciennik ,Vickers Burdett ,and Paul L. Modrich
Chem. Rev., 2006, 106 (2), pp 302–323; DOI: 10.1021/cr0404794
Publication Date (Web): December 23, 2005

Photochemical properties of Escherichia coli DNA photolyase: a flash photolysis study
Paul F. Heelis, Aziz Sancar
Biochemistry, 1986, 25 (25), pp 8163–8166; DOI: 10.1021/bi00373a006
Publication Date: December 1986

Photochemical properties of Escherichia coli DNA photolyase: selective photodecomposition of the second chromophore
Paul F. Heelis, Gillian Payne, Aziz Sancar
Biochemistry, 1987, 26 (15), pp 4634–4640; DOI: 10.1021/bi00389a007
Publication Date: July 1987

The active form of Escherichia coli DNA photolyase contains a fully reduced flavin and not a flavin radical, both in vivo and in vitro
Gillian Payne, Paul F. Heelis, Brian R. Rohrs, Aziz Sancar
Biochemistry, 1987, 26 (22), pp 7121–7127; DOI: 10.1021/bi00396a038
Publication Date: November 1987

Binding of Escherichia coli DNA photolyase to UV-irradiated DNA
Gwendolyn B. Sancar, Frances W. Smith, Aziz Sancar
Biochemistry, 1985, 24 (8), pp 1849–1855; DOI: 10.1021/bi00329a007
Publication Date: April 1985

News media can arrange telephone interviews with Schmidt or other experts in the field through the ACS Office of Public Affairs.  

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 158,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

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