This year's Nobel Medicine Prize went to US geneticists Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young for their discoveries on how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth's revolutions. <br/><br/>The award was announced today by the Nobel Assembly. <br/><br/>For many years, scientists have known that living organisms, including humans, have an internal clock that help them adapt to to the rotation of earth. <br/><br/>The clock influences such biological functions as hormone levels, sleep, body temperature and metabolism. It is what causes jetlag — when the internal clock and external environment move out of sync when we change time zones. <br/><br/>Using the fruit fly as a model organism, the scientists isolated a gene that controls the daily biological rhythm.<br/><br/>The trio will share the prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about 1.1 million US Dollars.) <br/><br/>Meanwhile, the panel that awards the Nobel Prize in literature says this year's winner will be announced on Thursday.

US geneticists Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young were awarded the Nobel Medicine Prize today for shedding light on the internal biological clock that governs the wake-sleep cycles of most living things. <br/><br/>Their discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth's revolutions. The award was announced by the Nobel Assembly.<br/><br/>The trio will share the prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about 1.1 million US Dollars.<br/><br/> The panel that awards the Nobel Prize in literature says this year's winner will be announced on Thursday. The Swedish Academy announced the date in a short statement today.