San Diego native shares Nobel Prize

One of the three American scientists sharing this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is a San Diego native.

Carol W. Greider, who works at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, shares the honor with Jack W. Szostak of Massachusetts General Hospital and Elizabeth H. Blackburn of UC San Francisco.

The scientists were honored for helping to solve how chromosomes are copied while a cell is being divided and how chromosomes are protected against degradation, foundation officials said in a statement. The San Diego-born, 48-year-old Greider is director of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences in Baltimore, according to the university.

In an interview this morning, Greider said she had “no expectation” of winning the award but that she had seen “information out in the press” that Greider and her colleagues were contenders for a Nobel Prize.