This year's Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research went to three American biologists who have investigated the microbiota, the microorganisms that inhabit our gut, as well as the language used by bacteria to process nutrients and their role in infections.
The winners are the Americans Jeffrey I. Gordon, biologist and director of the Center for Genome Science and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis; Everett Peter Greenberg, microbiologist and professor at the University of Washington; and Bonnie Lynn Bassler, a molecular biologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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The jury justifies the award in its minutes "for his contributions to new approaches that recognize the indispensable role of communities of microorganisms in life on Earth, including that of human beings."
"Jeffrey Gordon has pioneered the discovery and understanding of the human microbiome, i.e. the immense number and diversity of microorganisms that live in the body, with an essential role in health, including metabolism, immune response and nutrition. Peter Greenberg and Bonnie Lynn Bassler have revealed unprecedented mechanisms of communication between bacteria, which emit chemical signals that modulate their collective behavior. Both discoveries are enabling innovative therapeutic applications and the search for effective new treatments against antibiotic-resistant bacteria."
Jeffrey I. Gordon is internationally known for demonstrating the importance of the gut microbiome, and how gut microbes play a critical role in diseases such as obesity or diabetes. While Peter Greenberg and Bonnie Bassler have conducted key research into the mechanism by which bacteria communicate with each other from cell to cell, a phenomenon dubbed quorum sensing, to coordinate functions that are difficult or impossible to achieve by individual cells, such as nutrient uptake and processing, or controlling bacterial physiology in the context of infectious diseases.
This year's jury was chaired by Pedro Miguel Echenique Landiríbar and integrated by Jesús del Álamo, Alberto Aparici Benages, Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras, Avelino Corma Canós, Miguel Delibes de Castro, Sandra Myrna Díaz, Clara Grima Ruiz, Bernardo Hernández González, Jerónimo López Martínez, Inmaculada Martínez Rubio, Amador Menéndez Velázquez, Concepción Alicia Monje Micharet, Ginés Morata Pérez, Inés Rodríguez Hidalgo, María Teresa Telleria Jorge, María Vallet Regí, María Paz Zorzano Mier and Cristina Garmendia Mendizábal (secretary).
The winning candidacy was proposed by Philip L. Felgner, 2021 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research.
- Princess of Asturias Awards
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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