"We discovered the garbage truck of the human body" says Professor Aaron Ciechanover when he tries to simplify the discovery to which he was partner and which lead to the first Nobel Prize for Israeli scientists in Chemistry. The human body is made up of over a hundred thousand different proteins. These proteins are in a constant process of destruction and replacement.

It is amazing to discover that in three months almost all the proteins from which we are built are replaced. But how does our body manage to expel the deficient proteins? How does it destroy them? The scientific duo Avram Hersko and his student Aaron Ciechanover, together with their partner Irwin Rose managed to decipher this central question. They discovered the "Death Tag", a protein named ubiquitin whose function is protein removal.