A trio of American scientists have won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for pioneering work on the body's cell transport system, unlocking insights into diabetes, immune disorders and other diseases.
James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Suedhof on Monday shared the prize for discovering how molecules vital to cellular functioning are shunted around in an internal freight system, tucked inside sacs called vesicles.
They also helped resolve how the vesicles arrive on time and in the right place - a major riddle, given that this takes place in a microscopic environment humming with movement.
If the package fails to show up at the right time, or goes to the wrong location, this can cause cellular malfunction.
"Through their discoveries, Rothman, Schekman and Suedhof have revealed the exquisitely precise control system for the transport and delivery of cellular cargo," the Nobel panel said.
"Without this wonderfully precise organisation, the cell would lapse into chaos."
Suedhof, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology at Stanford University in California, was driving a car "in the middle of Spain" when reached by the Nobel Committee several hours after the announcement.
"Are you serious? Oh, my God," he said when given the news, according to a recording carried on the official Nobel website.
Suedhof, who was born in 1955 in Germany but is now a US citizen, welcomed sharing the prize with two others, saying "one tends to overestimate oneself, but I think it's more than fair".
Schekman, 64 and a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley, told AFP: "My reaction when I heard about it was one of disbelief and joy."
Rothman, a 62-year-old professor and chairman of the department of cell biology at Yale University, said: "Almost anyone who receives the Nobel prize has some indirect knowledge of one sort or another that they might be a candidate, so at some level it's not a complete surprise.
"But that it actually happens is an out-of-body experience," he added.
As the trio got over their amazement, they turned to warning that scientific progress in the United States is in peril due to unprecedented funding cuts and ideological challenges.
"I see today ... the discouragement that young scientists in this country feel and it is something we need to pay attention to if we want to maintain this country as the great competitive world leader that it has been," said Rothman, adding that it is now "much, much more difficult" for a young scientist to obtain funding.
Suedhof meanwhile pointed to "a significant increasingly vocal percentage of the population that thinks we shouldn't go after truth and truth is not important" which "worries the hell out of me".
"You can't at the same time be for science and against it.
" The trio worked independently on various aspects of the vesicle system, in research spanning three-and-a-half decades.
They will share equally the prize sum of eight million Swedish kronor ($1.25 million, 925,000 euros), reduced because of the economic crisis last year from the 10 million kronor awarded since 2001.
In line with tradition, the ceremony will take place in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.
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