Nobel Prize Awarded to Linda Buck

Buck is in her final year as an Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in Aging and has been doing research to screen large chemical libraries for compounds that extend lifespan in C. elegans in order to determine the identities of the molecules with which they interact in the organism. Using cutting edge screening tools she is working to identify the multiple processes that can influence aging as well as those that may operate in a subset of cells to exert a higher level "central" control over aging throughout the body, and thus do for longevity genes, what she and Richard Axel did for the biology of olfaction.

For further information, see http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/2004/index.html.