Monday's Molecule #80

 
Today's molecules are the little black blobs in the photograph. One of them is circled in the lower left-hand corner.

There's a direct connection between today's molecule and a Nobel Prize. In fact, the photograph was lifted directly from the Nobel lecture of the prize winner. The prize was awarded for determining the role of those little black blobs in the type of cell shown in the photo.

The first person to correctly identify the molecule 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. You know who you are.


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 may select multiple winners if several people get it right.

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

UPDATE: The photograph is rough ER and the black blobs are ribosomes. George Palade won the Nobel Prize for working out the pathway of protein secretion from the ribosomes on the surface of the ER to the plasma membrane. Many of you got it right but the first one was Charles Peterson of Hofstra University.

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