Two women in US trio to share Nobel Prize for medicine

AMERICANS Elizabeth H Blackburn, Carol W Greider and Jack W Szostak won the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine yesterday for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that hasinspired new lines ofresearch into cancer.

It was the first time two women have been honoured at the same time.

The trio solved the mystery of how chromosomes, the rod-like structures that carry DNA, protect themselves from degrading when cells divide.