oneworldtalk

Tasmanian-born microbiologist, Elizabeth Blackburn, has added a shiny Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to her awards shelf for her ground breaking research into telomeres and cell aging.

For a long time it was a mystery as to how chromosomes were kept from unravelling, such as during replication. It was Blackburn's pioneering research with her colleagues that revealed the role of the enzyme, telomerase reverse transcriptase, in maintaining the telomeres, which served as a 'cap' to the end of chromosomes, thus preventing them from unravelling.

It was also found that telomeres play a significant role in cell ageing. As the telomeres shorten over time, they can block cell division, although telomerase can restore the telomeres, allowing the cell to divide indefinitely. Some cancers also take advantage of telomerase to continue their cell replication.

Blackburn studied at the University of Melbourne and then Cambridge, where she earned her PhD, before moving to Yale and then the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. It was here that she did her ground breaking word on telomeres.

She's also had her fair share of controversy, being dropped from President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics in 2004 reportedly because of her outspoken criticism of the government's policy on stem cell research.

Blackburn is the 11th Australian to receive a Nobel Prize, and the first Australian-born woman to receive the coveted Prize.