The Nobel prize in Chemistry was won by three scientists for developing a technique to produce detailed images of life’s complex molecular machinery.
Jacques Dubochet of Switzerland, Joachim Frank of the US and Richard Henderson of UK won the award for developing cryo-electron microscopy for high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution.
The three will receive equal shares of the 9m Swedish kronor (£825,000) prize, which was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Wednesday.
Cryo-electron microscopy is "a cool method for imaging the materials of life," said Nobel committee member Göran K. Hansson from Stockholm on Wednesday. The development now allows scientists to visualize proteins at the atomic level.
The technique they developed has allowed the structures of biomolecules to be studied in high-resolution for the first time, an advance that revolutionalised the field of biochemistry.
The works of Dubochet, Frank and Henderson paved the way for imaging 3D structures of biomolecules.
Electron microscopes were long believed to only be suitable for imaging dead matter because the powerful electron beam destroys biological material.
But in 1990, Henderson succeeded in using an electron microscope to generate a three-dimensional image of a protein at atomic resolution. This breakthrough proved the technology's potential.
Frank made the technology generally applicable. Between 1975 and 1986 he developed an image processing method in which the electron microscope's fuzzy two dimensional images are analysed and merged to reveal a sharp three-dimensional structure.
Dubochet added water to electron microscopy. Liquid water evaporates in the electron microscope's vacuum, which makes the biomolecules collapse.
In the early 1980s, Dubochet succeeded in vitrifying water -- he cooled water so rapidly that it solidified in its liquid form around a biological sample, allowing the biomolecules to retain their natural shape even in a vacuum.
Following these discoveries, the electron microscope's every nut and bolt have been optimised.
The desired atomic resolution was reached in 2013, and researchers can now routinely produce three-dimensional structures of biomolecules.
Last year’s prize went to three European chemists for developing “nano-machines”, an advance that paved the way for the world’s first smart materials.
