Three Americans won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday, Oct. 7 for their discovery of a machinery that regulates how cells transport major molecules in a cargo system that would deliver them to be at the right place and the right time, New York Times reported.

The winners were James E. Rothman, 62, of Yale University; Randy W. Schekman, 64, of the University of California, Berkeley; and Dr. Thomas C. Südhof, 57, of Stanford University, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced. The basic research of these three people solved the mystery of how cells organize a system in order to transport the molecules within the cells as well as to export them outside.

The result of their study was that the molecules moved around a cell in small packages. Each scientist discovered different aspects of what is needed to ensure that the right molecule is shipped to the right place at the right time.

This prestigious scientific award arrived at a dark time for the National Institutes of Health, the agency that funded an estimated $49 million to help support the winner's work. The federal science research was forced to send home majority of its staff after the government shutdown.

"This is a stark reminder of how these are the best of times and the worst of times for American biomedical research," Dr. Francis Collins, the N.I.H. director, said in an interview on Monday. "Today we celebrate the three N.I.H.-supported Nobel Prize winners, but we're being slammed by sequestration and a government shutdown."

However, even before the shutdown, scientists were facing financial difficulties that would limit the kind of research that actually lead to this year's Nobel Prize, Dr. Collins added. "How many potential future Nobel Prize winners are struggling to find research support today, or have been sent home on furlough?" he said. "How many of them are wondering whether they should do something else - or move to another country? It is a bitter irony for the future of our nation's health that N.I.H. is being hamstrung this way, just when the science is moving forward at an unprecedented pace."