The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1994 "for their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells"

Alfred G. Gilman USA University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas Dallas, TX, USA b. 1941

Martin Rodbell USA National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Research Triangle Park, NC, USA b d. 1998

They shared the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their separate research in discovering molecules called G proteins, which are intermediaries in the multistep pathway cells use to react to an incoming signal, such as a hormone or neurotransmitter.

Alfred G. Gilman 1941-born,father, Alfred Gilman, was a professor at Yale University graduated from Yale with his B.S. entered a M.D.-Ph.D. program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio graduated from Case Western.

Alfred G. Gilman 1969~1971-did his post-doctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health with Nobel laurate Marshall Nirenberg became a professor at the University of Virginia.

Alfred G. Gilman 1981-beame chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Martin Rodbell 1925-born in Baltimore, Maryland 1943-entered Johns Hopkins University 1944-his studies were interrupted by his military service as a U.S. Navy radio operator during World War II returned to Hopkins 1949-received his B.S. in biology

Martin Rodbell 1950-married Barbara Ledermannwith whom he had four children received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Washington to 1956 did post-doctoral work at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign

Martin Rodbell 1985-became Scientific Director of the NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Chapel Hill, North Carolina 1994-retirement 1998-died in Chapel Hill of multiple organ failure after an extended illness

In the 1960s Rodbell demonstrated that a cell's response to a chemical signal involves not only a receptor for the signal at the cell's surface and an amplifier that functions within the cell, as was already known, but also an intermediary molecule that transduces the message from receptor to amplifier.

Gilman worked in the 1970s with mutant cells that were unable to send signals properly, identified the intermediary signaling molecule as a G protein, so named because it becomes activated when bound to a molecule called GTP. Abnormally functioning G proteins can disrupt the normal signal transduction process and play a role in diseases such as cholera, cancer, and diabetes.

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