1936-

German-born naturalized-American biochemist who won a Nobel Prize in 1999 for discovering that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization within the cell. Blobel found that when proteins are first synthesized within the cell they carry signals, rather like ZIP codes, that indicate whether they should be exported from the cell or take their place in a specific compartment of the cell. Errors in these special codes may be involved in diseases like cystic fibrosis.