Before the committee that awards the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine made its announcement on October 7th, the speculation about which discovery would win ranged from the revolution in the treatment of obesity to cancer-causing genes; from understanding the gut microbiome to perhaps even the mapping of the human genome itself—something that has still not earned the coveted “call from Sweden”. The broad trends in what ends up winning the prize are plain: they increasingly recognise the smallest advances at the molecular and cellular level—rather than work on physiology or organs—because that is where the most exciting scientific frontiers are to be found.