STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Chemists from the United States,
Britain and Denmark shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry today for
discoveries about the molecule that stores and transfers energy in
the body's cells.
Paul D. Boyer of the University of California at Los Angeles and
John E. Walker of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of
Molecular Biology of Cambridge, England, will share half of the $1
million prize for their discovery of the process that makes the
energy molecule adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.
The other half of the prize money will go to Jens C. Skou of
Aarhus University in Denmark, who discovered an enzyme that works
with ATP to regulate the concentration of sodium and potassium
inside a cell.
Reached by telephone at his home in Sea Ranch, Calif., Boyer
described ATP as ``the currency of the cell.''
``This is the machine that makes the money that the rest of the
body spends,'' he said. ``Without it there would be no life at
all.''
Virtually every cell function relies on ATP, from the building
of bones to the contraction of muscles and the transmission of
nerve impulses.
``The three laureates have performed pioneering work on enzymes
that participate in the conversion of the ``high energy'' compound
adenosine triphosphate,'' said the citation by the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences.
