Dr. F. Ulrich Hartl

Dr. Arthur Horwich, from Yale University, and Dr. F. Ulrich Hartl, from the Max Plank Institute in Germany, won this year’s Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. They’ll explain their discovery of “chaperone assisted protein folding,” a seminal finding that has allowed many of the modern breakthroughs in molecular biology and biotechnology, paving the way for advances in research into everything from Alzheimer’s Disease to Mad Cow Disease. Their discoveries are now part of the basic tool box scientists use to build experiments that give them a better understanding of the cellular mechanisms that comprise all life.