On Wednesday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to two Americans and one British chemist for research that has "taken control of evolution and used it for purposes that bring the greatest benefit to humankind." Half of the award and $1 million prize goes to Frances H. Arnold at the California Institute of Technology for conducting "the first directed evolution of enzymes," the academy said. George P. Smith at the University of Missouri in Columbia and Sir Gregory P. Winter at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge were jointly awarded the other half for using "phage display" to help produce new pharmaceuticals.
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