3 Americans Share 2009 Nobel Medicine Prize

Winners’ research has implications for cancer and aging research

STOCKHOLM - Americans Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak were named winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for research that has implications for cancer and aging research.

The trio solved a big problem in biology: how chromosomes can be "copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation," the citation said.

It said the laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes — the telomeres — and in an enzyme that forms them. Telomeres are often compared to the plastic tips at the end of shoe laces that keep those laces from unraveling.

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