Molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn said Monday that she was following her nose when she and two colleagues found a key to staving off the ravages of aging. The research that earned her an early-morning wake-up call Monday from the Nobel Prize committee has been praised as holding the promise of human bodies that don't grow frail with time or let cancer grow. 'It sort of translates into a fountain of youth; the number of years of healthy living is related to telomere length,' Blackburn said, referring to an enzyme she helped discover in the mid 1970s. 'We don't think clocks will be turned back, but it is a question of whether we will extend our health span.' The 60-year-old Australia-born scientist shares this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine with fellow researchers Carol Greider of John Hopkins University School of Medicine and Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School. 'I've been pretty dazed,' the University of California, San Francisco professor and researcher said. 'As I groped in the dark for the phone and some very well spoken voice identified Sweden, Nobel Prize and committee it was a good start, but then you begin to think how many friends have a really good sense of humor.' Blackburn was part of a trio credited with discovering an enzyme called telomerase that protects people's genes from wearing down through their lives. 'They are like the tips at the end of the shoelace and stop the shoelace from fraying away,' Blackburn explained, comparing genetic strands to shoelaces and the enzyme to protective tips. 'We think this is one of the things that contribute to age-related diseases. The enzyme is basically building back the tips of the shoelaces.' A problem is that there isn't much telomerase in the human body, according to the scientist. Blackburn and her team did their research at a University of California, Berkeley, lab decades before DNA sequencing and genome project breakthroughs. 'I was just following my nose doing experiments related to my curiosity,' Blackburn said. 'Everybody was just curious about DNA sequencing, particularly the ends.' Biotechnology and pharmacology firms are following up on Blackburn's work, but there are no drugs or treatments on the immediate horizon, according to UCSF chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann. 'Blackburn's work is of intense interest to biotech and pharma companies,' said Hellmann, who was an executive at biotechnology star Genentech before joining UCSF a few months ago. Manipulating telomerase can not only prevent age-related blindness and heart disease, it could let doctors prevent cancer cells from spreading, according to Blackburn. 'You can see the shape of where things are going,' Blackburn said. Blackburn has been working with a psychology professor on tests that indicate that stress is 'very bad for telomerase.' 'I hope this prize will leave me lots of time to do (research); that is what I love to do,' Blackburn said when asked how she plans to spend her share of the prize money. 'A little bit of seed money to start a project you haven't got funding for but want to try out; that is one of the things.' Blackburn noted that the honor comes as California budget woes are causing pay cuts for professors in the state college systems. 'Get a Nobel, get a pay cut,' Blackburn quipped. 'This is causality.' 