RALEIGH, (SGRToday.com) - They're celebrating at Duke University and UNC Chapel-Hill following the announcement from the Nobel Prize committee that two North Carolina professors have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2015.

Paul Modrich of Duke and Aziz Sancar of UNC-Chapel Hill are the winners of the top honor from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The Prize website states that the two, along with third winner Tomas Lindahl, won the award for "having mapped, at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard the genetic information."

Full details can be found at http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2015/press.html