The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009

October 8, 2009 - 2:42 am | 85 views

Technology.am (Oct. 8, 2009) — The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 awards Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath for mapping ribosomes, one of the cell’s most complex components, at the atomic level.

ramakrishnan All three have used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

As ribosomes produce proteins, so they are crucial to life, and are also a major target for new antibiotics.

Inside every cell in all organisms, there are DNA molecules. They contain the blueprints for how a human being, a plant or a bacterium, looks and functions. But the DNA molecule is passive. If there was nothing else, there would be no life.

The blueprints become transformed into living matter through the work of ribosomes. Based upon the information in DNA, ribosomes make proteins: oxygen-transporting haemoglobin, antibodies of the immune system, hormones such as insulin, the collagen of the skin, or enzymes that break down sugar. There are tens of thousands of proteins in the body and they all have different forms and functions. They build and control life at the chemical level.

steitz This understanding shows how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics.

Indian born US citizen Venkatraman Ramakrishnan did Ph.D. in Physics in 1976 from Ohio University, USA. Senior Scientist and Group Leader at Structural Studies Division, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK.

US citizen Thomas A. Steitz born did Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry in 1966 from Harvard University, MA, USA. Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, both at Yale University, CT, USA.

yonath Ada E. Yonath, an Israeli citizen born in Jerusalem, and did Ph.D. in X-ray Crystallography in 1968 from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Professor of Structural Biology and Director of Helen & Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure & Assembly, both at Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.