In 1997, Prusiner was awarded Nobel prize for his work in:

Ans. c (Prion proteins). (Ref. Anathanarayan, Microbiology, 6th ed., p 448, 567)PRION# Stanley Prusiner, a U.S. biochemist whose discovery provided key insights into dementia-related diseases, won the 1997 Nobel Medicine Prize.# Thus, Stanley Prusiner added prions to the list of infectious agents like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites.# Prions exist normally as innocuous cellular proteins;# Prion diseases may be inherited, laterally transmitted, or occur spontaneously.RECOMBINANT DNA TECHNOLOGY# Recombinant DNA (rDNA) technology is a field of molecular biology in which scientists "edit" DNA to form new synthetic molecules, which are often referred to as "chimeras".# The practice of cutting, pasting, and copying DNA dates back to Arthur Kornberg's successful replication of viral DNA in a breakthrough that served as a proof-of-concept for cloning.# This was followed by the Swiss biochemist Werner Arber's discovery of restriction enzymes in bacteria that degrade foreign viral DNA molecules while sparing their own DNA.# It also touched off a firestorm among activists such as Jeremy Rifkin, for whom terms like 'cloning' and 'recombinant DNA'. were new.# The most recent advance is the development of insulin analogues produced by recombinant DNA, peptide synthesis, and enzyme-catalyzed semisynthesis. Early 1970's Paul Berg, Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer developed ways to cut and splice DNA, introducing recombinant DNA techniques.# Recombinant DNA technology was first used commercially to produce human insulin from bacteria.