Of course, I am not critisizing the recipients‘ work (anyway, I couldn’t since I am a chemist and don’t know lots of things about ribosomes, apart from their double-potato shape they always have in basic biology textbooks) nor the fact that it deserves recognition, but the point is that the Nobel prize in chemistry went to people who actually do chemistry, say, five times in the last 10 years (2000: conductive polymers, 2001: catalysis, 2002: mass spec and NMR, 2003: cell membranes, 2004: ubiquitin and protein degradation, 2005: metathesis, 2006: eukaryotic transcription, 2007: chemistry on surfaces, 2008: GFP and 2009: ribosomes). So, what about creating a Nobel Prize in biology? They did it for Economics in the 60s…

Well now we just have to wait for next year – and hope that people working with molecules lighter than 50 kDa will be recognized as chemists. I’m quite sure there are hosts of guys working in organic synthesis, catalysis, nanotechnology or physical chemistry – to mention a few – who deserve to get the next Nobels. And regarding Grätzel… I keep my celebrating post for next year!

Histamine is a very simple molecule which is present is basically every single cell of our bodies. It is produced through enzymatic decarboxylation of amino acid histidine. Histamine’s many roles include neurotransmission (particularly in the sleep regulation mechanism) and immunological response, explaining why it is involved in various immunological troubles, ranging from relatively mild allergies to severe autoimmune diseases.

Histamine

A high proportion of histamine is stored in cells called mastocytes, which are located mostly at ‘risky’ places where the outside world can come into contact with our internal tissues: skin, lungs, mouth, nose… sounds like places where we can feel allergies right? When an allergy reaction takes place, the (harmless to non-allergic people) allergen interacts at the surface of the mastocyte, inducing the release of a massive amount of histamine in the surrounding environment. This results in well known consequences, such as mucuous secretions, itchiness, conjunctivitis. To produce these effects, histamine needs to interact with particular receptors, called, not so surprisingly, histamine receptors. The easy solution to overcome these effects is to prevent the histamine+receptor interaction: this is done thanks to antihistamine molecules which are also binding to histamine receptors, but without inducing allergic symptoms (pharmacologically speaking, antihistamine is an inverse agonist of histamine).

Finally, what about the widely reported drowsiness side-effect? As stated before, histamine plays a role in the sleep regulation. Histamine metabolism is perturbated upon antihistamine injestion, and one of the side effects is a (slight) inhability to maintain vigilance. Recent drugs (including my relieving cetirizin) are supposed to possess attenuated side-effects, but in my experience it is still not perfect since I tend to feel an urge to sleep after each intake…

Cetirizine, the active compound of many antihistamine drugs.

The researchers, led by Prof. Ross King, show an example where the robot investigates genetic characteristics of saccharomyces cerevisiae -the well-known baker’s yeast- and enzymes produced by some of its genes. Adam followed its hypothesis-experiment-interpretation cycle in order to reach a conclusion. Human scientists then repeated the experiments to discover that Adam’s results were actually correct.

So the question that immediately arises is: will we -researchers- be soonish replaced by 24-hours working, high-throughput screening Adamses in the labs? Although he already has another robot scientist (Eve) on the assembly line, King explains in an article posted in sciencedaily.com, that the goal behind his research is to “make science more efficient” through automation. It is actually debatable to what extent Adam “creates” new knowledge. One could say, it only finds some answers that are hidden among massive amount of data – Adam is just more efficient than humans at the needle-in-a-haystack game! Anyway, automation of research definitely makes progress much faster (cf. DNA sequencing), and standardized results are now available and understandable by hosts of researchers around the world. It seems like robots will provide scientists with more and more food for thinking than gradually replace them in the labs… which is somewhat comforting!

Don’t forget to visit The Robot Scientist, to find pics, videos and many more informations about Adam and its fellow Eve.

Reference: King et al. Science 2009, 5923, 85-89.