Blobel was appointed to the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1986. Blobel was the sole recipient of the 1999
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of
signal peptides. Signal peptides form an integral part of
protein targeting, a mechanism for cells to direct newly synthesized
protein molecules to their proper location by means of an "address tag" (i.e., a signal peptide) within the molecule. Blobel died of cancer in
Manhattan at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center on February 18, 2018 at the age of 81. By the time of his death, Blobel was described as having "ushered cell biology into the molecular age" through his work on the fractionation and reconstitution of functional protein complexes and sub-cellular components
in vitro.
Philanthropy Blobel became well known for his direct and active support for the rebuilding of
Dresden in
Germany, becoming, in 1994, the founder and president of the nonprofit "Friends of Dresden, Inc." He donated all of the Nobel award money to the restoration of Dresden, in particular for the rebuilding of the
Frauenkirche (completed in 2005) and the building of a new
synagogue. In Leipzig he pursued a rebuilding of the
Paulinerkirche, the university church of the
University of Leipzig, which had been blown up by the communist regime of East Germany in 1968, arguing "this is a shrine of German cultural history, connected to the most important names in German cultural history." Gunter was also a founding member of the board of directors of Research Foundation to Cure AIDS, a U.S. not-for-profit research organization. ==Personal life==