Hour One: Medicine Nobel Prize Winners / Ozone Hole

This week, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden announced the winners of several of the Nobel Prizes. In this hour, we'll talk with two of the three winners of the prize in Physiology or Medicine about their research, and about the future of neuroscience.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2000 was awarded jointly to Arvid Carlsson of the University of Göteborg, Paul Greengard of Rockefeller University, and Eric Kandel of Columbia University "for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system." Dr. Carlsson performed experiments that established that the chemical dopamine is a neurotransmitter, and developed ways to measure dopamine levels in the brain. His work led to the development of several drugs, including L-dopa for Parkinson's disease. Dr. Greengard's research investigated how messages carried by such neurotransmitters are translated into chemical responses inside neural cells. Dr. Kandel's work established the use of a sea slug as a model organism for studying learning and memory, and demonstrated that the biochemical basis for both short and long-term memory begins in the synapse.

Dr. Kandel and Dr. Greengard will join us to talk about their work.

Plus, we'll get an update on the state of the ozone layer. Researchers reported this week that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was the largest that it has been in recorded times - even though the amount of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere is decreasing. We'll talk about the hole's origins, and the delicate interplay of conditions that can make its size fluctuate.

Ozone hole over the South Pole. NOAA image.

The frontiers of neurology and biochemistry -- and an ozone update -- both in this hour of Science Friday. Call in with your questions and comments to 1-800-989-8255.

Listen to this program in RealAudio!

Guests:
Eric Kandel
Senior Investigator
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Director, Center for Neurobiology and Behavior
Columbia University
New York , New York

Paul Greengard
Director, Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience
The Rockefeller University
New York, New York

David Hoffman
Director, Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Boulder, Colorado

Books/Articles Discussed:

"Essentials of Neural Science" by Eric R. Kandel. McGraw-Hill, 1996. "Memory : From Mind to Molecules" by Larry R. Squire, Eric R. Kandel. W H Freeman & Co, 2000. More books about the Nobel Prizes (find more SciFri books here)

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Related Links:

Nobel e-Museum
Nobel Press Release on the Prize for Physiology or Medicine
Columbia Univ. Press Release: Eric Kandel Wins Nobel Prize in Medicine
Rockefeller Univ. Press Release: Paul Greengard
Society for Neuroscience
Neuroscience for Kids
Aplysia Resource Facility
The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Neuroscience (Biosciences)

CPC Products - Stratosphere: SBUV-2 Total Ozone - Ozone Hole
Stratospheric Ozone Depletion tutorial
Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory

Produced By: Tom Clarke
Web Producer: Charles Bergquist