It’s that time of the year again when I do a round-up of the winners of the scientific Nobel Prizes. If nothing else, writing these posts helps me remember and understand what they are for. This task is a little more difficult this year as the prizes for so many categories are split into two fields that aren’t really closely related. But let’s get on with it.

We’ll begin with the prize for Physiology or Medicine as it’s closest to being the same research topic. It goes to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation. Researchers have long known the immune system, in particular a type of white blood cells known as T-cells, are regulated by accelerators and inhibitors to ensure that they attack only foreign microorganisms. Allison studied the T-cell protein CTLA-4 which serves as a brake and wondered if using an antibody to block its function would release the immune system to attack cancer cells. Indeed it worked and would eventually be developed into a new treatment for skin cancer.

Similarly, Honjo worked on PD-1 another protein expressed on the surface of T-cells that also acts as a brake but with a different mechanism. This also had promising results in getting the immune system to fight against cancer cells.

The prize for Chemistry is also split into two and what the two have in common is the usage of a technique called directed evolution, which as science-fiction fans will expect, is exactly as it says, harnessing the power of evolution to develop novel substances. One half goes to Frances H. Arnold for the directed evolution of enzymes and the other half to George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter for for the phage display of peptides and antibodies.

The former wanted to modify subtilisin, an enzyme that chops up other proteins to work in a hostile solvent. She induced random mutations into the gene that encodes subtilisin, tested the performance of the resulting variant, kept the best performing ones to seed a new generation and so on. After only three generations, she arrived at an enzyme that worked 256 times better than the original did.

The latter two invented a technique that involves adding an extra gene to a bacteriophage, which then goes on to hijack bacteria that in turns produces more of the virus, including the protein encoded by the extra gene. In this way, they generated bacteriophages with different antibodies on their surfaces to search for those that could stick to TNF-alpha, a protein known to cause inflammation. Multiple cycles of this were done to find the antibody that binds the most tightly to TNF-alpha.

Next up, the Physics prize is all about lasers. One half goes to Arthur Ashkin for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems and the other half to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.

The first case involves the invention of a technique that uses laser beams to hold small particles in place, relying on the radiation pressure of light to push the particle towards the center of the beam and trap it there. The second case is about finding a way to generate ever more powerful laser beams without burning out the equipment used. First they stretched out the duration of a laser beam, amplified it and then compressed it back, enabling lasers that peak at extremely high energy levels if only for a moment.

Finally the Economics prize is about long term macroeconomics analysis. Half goes to William D. Nordhaus for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis and the other half to Paul M. Romer for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis.

The first case involves developing a model to estimate the costs of climate change and is widely used today to calculate the consequences of climate policy interventions. The second case involves examining how technological change, or more generally new ideas, not only boost growth but that the non-rival nature of ideas make them different from other goods.