The Nobel Prise for G proteins

The 1994 Nobel Prise for Medicine and Physiology went to Alfred Gilman (right) and Martin Rodbell (far right).

Rodbell discovered that transducer molecules provide links between   hormone receptors and the effector molecules they regulate (e.g. adenylyl cyclase).

He also showed that the transducers were GTPases and thus he called them "nucleotide regulatory proteins", later to be renamed G proteins.

Gilman used biochemical methods and cDNA recombinant technology to isolate and sequence the G proteins.