Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar have, independently of each other, mapped several processes for DNA repair that are relevant to humans. The story begins with Tomas Lindahl, born in the same country as Alfred Nobel. Life exists – so DNA must be repairable “How stable is DNA, really?”, Tomas Lindahl started wondering towards the end of the 1960s. At the time, the scientific community believed that the DNA molecule – the foundation of all life – was extremely resilient; anything else was simply out of the question. Evolution does require mutations, but only a limNobel Prize® is a registered trademark of the Nobel Foundation. ited number per generation. If genetic information were too unstable no multi-cellular organisms would