Peter Agre

Peter Courtland Agre ( born January 30, 1949 in Northfield, Minnesota) is an American physician and molecular biologist, and Nobel laureate in chemistry.

Life

Peter Agre studied chemistry at Augsburg College in Minneapolis (Minnesota), subsequently he studied medicine at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore ( Maryland), where he also teaches since January 2008.

On the study of channels in cell membranes he was awarded, together with Roderick MacKinnon (USA) the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2003. Peter Agre was awarded the prize for the discovery of water channels.

The fact that the cells of the body in addition to the nonspecific transport of water through the Zellmenbran would also have specific channels for transporting water, you already suspected to mid-19th century, the exact transport mechanism, however, they sought long in vain. Only in 1988 it finally succeeded Peter Agre, the molecular processes in detail to decipher. He isolated a membrane protein from which he realized a year later that this is the long-sought water channel had to be. Further research to confirm his discovery - the protein baptized Agre on aquaporin for aqueous pore. It is a large protein family, as we know today - alone in the human body eleven different variants were found. This crucial discovery of the U.S. researcher opened the door to a whole series of biochemical, physiological and genetic studies of water channels in bacteria, plants and mammals. Today, researchers can follow a water molecule on its way through the cell membrane in detail. This improves the understanding of a number of diseases ( inter alia, of the kidney, the heart, the muscles and the nervous system).