Nobel chemistry kings crowned

STOCKHOLM: Americans Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon won the 2003 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discoveries about channels in cell membranes, the Royal Swedish Academy said yesterday.

Agre, 54, is part of the staff at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. MacKinnon, 47, is from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of The Rockefeller University in New York.

Agre was cited for his work in 1988 for isolating a membrane protein that, a year or so later, he realized must be the long- sought-after water channel.

The discovery opened the door to a whole series of biochemical, physiological and genetic studies of water channels in bacteria, plants and mammals.

MacKinnon was honoured for his work studying the other type of membrane channel, or ion channel. He surprised the whole research community when in 1998 he was able to determine the spatial structure of a potassium channel.

The pair will share a check for 10 million kronor, or US$1.3 million. The Nobel Peace Prize is to be announced tomorrow in Oslo, Norway.

Agencies via Xinhua