International Business Times :Irwin Rose, who won the 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry along with two collaborators for discovering the way how cells identify and destroy unwanted proteins and transform them into new ones, died Tuesday. The discovery led to the development of new drugs to fight diseases like cervical cancer and cystic fibrosis.Rose, who was 88, died in his sleep at the house of one of his sons in Deerfield, Massachusetts, according to the University of California, Irvine (UCI), where Rose had been a researcher.The 2004 Nobel laureate had “formidable intellect and unwavering curiosity about fundamental biological and chemical processes that are the foundation for life,” UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman said in a statement. “We extend our deepest condolences to his family.”Rose and two other researchers-Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko of the Israel Institute of Technology-shared the 2004 Nobel Prize for discovering how cells can regulate the presence of a certain protein by marking old, damaged proteins with a molecule, called the “polypeptide ubiquitin.” Once marked, the proteins are then broken down rapidly in cellular “waste disposers.”
