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UC Professor Randy Schekman Wins Nobel

A UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology, Randy Schekman, is a co-winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries in cell transport systems, the Nobel committee announced today, Monday.

Randy Schekman, a professor or molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley, was named co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine today, Monday. 

Schekman, 64, shares the prize with Stanford professor Thomas Suedhof and Yale professor James Rothman for their discoveries relating to how substances are transported in cells.

“My first reaction was, ‘Oh, my god!’ Schekman said in a comment quoted by the Berkeley campus. “That was also my second reaction.”

He was awakened at 1:30 a.m. at his El Cerrito home with the news, the campus said.

Schekman's prize brings the total of Berkeley Nobel Laureates to 22, the campus said. He is the first to win in the physiology or medicine category.

A campus news release quoted the 50-member Nobel Assembly commendation of the three winners for revealing “the exquisitely precise control system for the transport and delivery of cellular cargo. Disturbances in this system have deleterious effects and contribute to conditions such as neurological diseases, diabetes, and immunological disorders.”

The Berkeley release, by science writer Robert Sanders, said, "Schekman and Rothman separately mapped out one of the body’s critical networks, the system in all cells that shuttles hormones and enzymes out and adds to the cell surface so it can grow and divide. This system, which utilizes little membrane bubbles to ferry molecules around the cell interior, is so critical that errors in the machinery inevitably lead to death."



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