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William Earnshaw describes the events that led to the discovery and cloning of the first kinetochore proteins 30 years ago using autoimmune sera from patients with scleroderma-spectrum disease. He also discusses our current appreciation of the complexity of this remarkable structure.
Aaron Ciechanover describes the discovery of the ubiquitin system and the analysis of its components using a 'classical' biochemical approach. These findings, which were published in a relatively modest journal, would prove to be ground-breaking.
