Edmond Fischer, who won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on reversible protein phosphorylation, has died, the Washington Post reports. He was 101.
Fischer won the prize jointly with his University of Washington colleague Edwin Krebs, who died in 2009. As the Post notes, Fischer and Krebs were interested in the enzymes involved in muscle contraction and by focusing on phosphorylase with its different active and inactive forms, uncovered the process of reversible protein phosphorylation. This, the New York Times adds, "turned out to be one of the fundamental mechanisms of cell signaling."
It is also important for the understanding of diseases like Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer as well as in the development of drugs, including ones to prevent organ transplant rejections, the Post notes.
"The beauty of science is that you know where you start from, but you never know where you will end up," Fischer said in a 2020 interview with the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, according to the Times.