He identified a pair of protein complexes, one on the vesicles and the second on their specific targets, that bind to each other like the two halves of a zip.
Dr Südhof described exactly how an arriving electrical impulse causes a rush of calcium ions into a cell, and how these subsequently cause vesicles loaded with neurotransmitters to bind to the cell wall and disgorge their contents across the gap.Many of the journalists attending the prize ceremony seemed baffled by the details of the announcement.
But no one ever said that life is fair.Blowing bubblesLess predictably, and less controversially, the prize for physiology or medicine went to James Rothman of Yale, Randy Schekman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Südhof of Stanford University, for their work on vesicles.
That is good news, because smaller vesicles can travel through blood capillaries more easily, and would thus be simpler to deploy.
In the right conditions, an emulsion of these molecules will organise itself into small spheres, known as vesicles, that contain part of the liquid the phospholipids were suspended in.Dr Anderson arranged for these conditions in a liquid that contained ribosomes the subcellular machines that manufacture proteins.
Dr Rothman discovered the molecular mechanism by which individual vesicles discharge their cargoes where they are needed, whether to other structures within a cell or through the cell wall to the outside.
And when Dr Anderson injected the modified vesicles into mice and then shone ultraviolet light of a wavelength that can pass through flesh at some of them, he found the tactic worked.
The 100-nanometre vesicles produced no protein whatsoever.The next stage is to test the nanofactories with DNA that makes proteins which might actually act as drugs—anticancer antibodies, for example.
And green the vesicles did indeed glow, showing that Dr Anderson's protein assembly line was running smoothly.The next phase was to bring the factory under control, so that it could be switched on at will, and thus act only where and when needed.
Some cyanobacteria, especially planktonic forms, have gas vesicles that contribute to their buoyancy.
Examination of the nose may reveal ulcers and vesicles (small sacs containing liquid), as in foot-and-mouth disease, a viral disease of cattle, or vesicular exanthema, a viral disease of swine.
