This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Steve Mirsky.

"The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute has today decided to award the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to William Kaelin, Sir Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability." Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Assembly, shortly after 5:30 A.M. (Eastern Time).

"Gregg Semenza was born in 1956 in New York.

He performed his prizewinning studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he's still active.

Sir Peter Ratcliffe was born in 1954 in Lancashire in the U.K. He performed his prizewinning studies at Oxford University.

And he's continuing to do his research at Oxford University, and he's also at the Francis Crick Institute in London.

And William Kaelin, born in 1957 in New York- he performed his prizewinning studies at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where he's still active in his own lab." Karolinska Institute researcher Randall Johnson studies the effects of low oxygen.

He explained the significance of the work of the new Nobel laureates: "This year's Nobel Prize is awarded for determining how oxygen levels are sensed by cells.

Oxygen is essential for life and is used by virtually all animal cells in order to convert food to usable energy.

However, the amount of oxygen available to cells, tissues and animals themselves can vary greatly.