Two Americans are sharing this years Nobel Prize in chemistry for helping reveal the way that many hormones and neurotransmitters and hundreds of drugs communicate with the interior of cells.

The winners, Robert J. Lefkowitz, 69, of Duke University and Brian K. Kobilka, 57, of Stanford University, were teacher and student. Both are physicians and neither has a doctorate in chemistry.

Their research, conducted over four decades, has elucidated the workings of G-protein-coupled receptors, a family with about 1,000 varieties that are involved in everything from sight and smell to the regulation of pain and heart rate.

More than one-third of all drugs on the market including beta blockers, antihistamines and opioid painkillers operate through G-protein-coupled receptors. Work in the past few years that reveals receptor structure in atomic detail may eventually lead to drugs with more precise action and fewer side effects.

In making the announcement, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the pair had made groundbreaking discoveries and called Kobilkas success last year in crystallizing a receptor at the moment it is being activated a molecular masterpiece. The two will share about $1.2 million.

With its insights both crucial to understanding cell biology and highly useful to clinical medicine, a Nobel for this field had long been predicted.

This could have been a prize in physiology or medicine, but its the chemical nature of the changes [driven by the receptors] that is being recognized here, said Bassam Shakhashiri, president of the American Chemical Society and a professor at the University of Wisconsin.

At a news conference, Lefkowitz said he and Kobilka couldnt be more different. Lefkowitz is a voluble, Bronx-accented New Yorker; Kobilka is a taciturn, small-town Minnesotan. Lefkowitz said the two had talked by Skype earlier in the day, and Lefkowitz had said Kobilkas recent work is maybe what pushed this over the line into prize-winning territory. Kobilka demurred and said Lefkowitzs work is what made his achievement possible.

What little was said was really very moving, he told the news conference, his voice catching.

Lefkowitzs research has been supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, based in Chevy Chase, since 1976 longer than any other of the institutes fellows, he said.

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Two Americans get chemistry Nobel for elucidating cellular receptors