Nurse, Sir Paul (1949-…), a British biologist, won the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his research on how cells divide and multiply in living organisms. Nurse shared the Nobel Prize with another British biologist, Timothy Hunt, and an American geneticist, Leland H. Hartwell. The three scientists all conducted research on the cell cycle—that is, the way cells grow and divide.
Experimenting with yeast, which is a simple, single-celled organism, Nurse identified a gene he called Cdc2. The gene enables cells to produce an enzyme belonging to a group called cyclin dependent kinases (CDK’s). CDK’s regulate a cell’s progress from one stage of the cell cycle to the next. At the beginning of the cell cycle, CDK’s signal the cell to copy its DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). All genes are made up of DNA, which directs the formation, growth, and reproduction of cells and organisms. Before a cell divides, it duplicates its DNA so that each new “daughter cell” has a complete copy. When DNA duplication is finished, CDK’s signal the cell to begin dividing.
Nurse later identified CDK genes in other living organisms, including human beings. Scientists know that genes that control the cell cycle also play a role in the development of cancer. Cancer is a disease in which cells multiply wildly, destroy healthy tissue, and endanger life. Defects in the genes that control the cell cycle may be responsible for the cell changes that lead to cancer. Nurse’s research has provided scientists with new possibilities for developing successful treatments for cancer.
Paul Maxime Nurse was born in Norwich, England, on Jan. 25, 1949. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Birmingham in 1970 and a Ph.D. degree in biology from the University of East Anglia in 1973. From 1973 to 1984, he conducted research at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and the universities of Edinburgh and Sussex in the United Kingdom. From 1984 to 1987, he directed the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) Laboratory in London. He served as professor of biology at the University of Oxford from 1987 to 1993. In 1993, he returned to the position of director of the ICRF Laboratory and became director general in 1996. In 2002, the ICRF merged with the Cancer Research Campaign to become Cancer Research UK. Nurse was knighted in 1999 and became known as Sir Paul Nurse. In 2003, he became president of Rockefeller University in New York City. He stepped down from this position in 2010 to begin a five-year term as president of the Royal Society in London. The Royal Society is the main science academy in the United Kingdom.
