Monday's Molecule #93

 
What's going on here? Your task is to identify the experiment that led to this result. It's a short step from there to this week's Nobel Laureate(s). You just need to switch species.

Here's a hint: This week's Nobel Laureate(s) and last week's Nobel Laureates have something in common.

You need to describe what you see in the figure as accurately as possible. Then identify the Nobel Laureate(s).

The first one to correctly identify the figure and name the Nobel Laureate(s), wins a free lunch at the Faculty Club. Previous winners are ineligible for one month from the time they first collected the prize. There are four ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Brad Hersh of Clemsen University, Alex Ling of the University of Toronto, Haruhiko Ishii, and Bill Chaney of the University of Nebraska.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Laureate(s) so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow. I reserve the right to select multiple winners if several people get it right.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours. Comments are now open.

UPDATE:The figure shows the result of an experiment where human cells in culture were irradiated with X-rays (Scherthan et al. 2008). There are two obvious chromosomal rearrangements. Breaks and deletions are common in X-ray treated cells. The Nobel Laureate is Hermann Muller who won the prize for creating mutants using X-rays. He worked with Drosophila melanogaster. Only one person got this one right and that person is ineligible.

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[Figure Credit: The figure is from Scherthan et al. (2008)]

Scherthana, H., Hieberb, L., Braselmannb, H., Meinekea, V., and Zitzelsberger, H. (2008) Accumulation of DSBs in γ-H2AX domains fuel chromosomal aberrations. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 371:694-697. [doi:10.1016/j.bbrc.2008.04.127]