Abstract
The 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to two researchers to honor their work studying a family of receptors in the body now known as G protein-coupled receptors. The research of Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka not only helped confirm the existence of these important receptors but also shed light on their structure and function. Increased knowledge of how G protein-coupled receptors work allows drug therapies to become more targeted and, thus, more effective.