The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath

07 October 2009 AlphaGalileo Foundation

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly to

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge,
United Kingdom
Thomas A. Steitz, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Ada E. Yonath, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

"for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome"

This year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry awards research into one of life's most important processes: the ribosome's translation of DNA information into life. Ribosomes produce proteins, which in turn control the chemistry in all living organisms. There are DNA molecules inside every cell of all organisms. These molecules contain the blueprints for how a human being, a plant or a bacterium, looks and functions.

The blueprints of the DNA molecules become transformed into living matter through the ribosomes. Based upon the information in DNA, ribosomes create proteins: oxygen-transporting haemoglobin, antibodies of the immune system, hormones such as insulin, the collagen of the skin, or enzymes. There are tens of thousands of proteins in the body and they all have different forms and functions.

The knowledge about the ribosome's inner workings is put to practical use in many of today's antibiotics which cure diseases by blocking the function of bacterial ribosomes. Bacteria cannot survive without functional ribosomes, so ribosomes are an important target for new antibiotics.

The laureates Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath have shown what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level. They 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. They have generated 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. These models are now used to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering.

http://nobelprize.org/prize_announcements/chemistry/index.html

Attached files

Ribosomes. Coloured transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of ribosomes (purple) passing through pores in a cell's nuclear membrane (orange). The nucleus is at top left and the cytoplasm is at bottom right. Ribosomes consist of two subunits composed of protein and ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA). They are made in the nucleolus (not seen) and pass out of the nucleus to the cytoplasm where they translate mRNA (messenger RNA) into proteins. - © This image is for illustration only and subject to copyright and may not be used or copied in any way without prior permission from Science Photo Library http://www.sciencephoto.com
PROTEIN SYNTHESIS, DRAWING Transcription and translation. After the transcription of the DNA into messenger RNA (mRNA) in the nucleus, the mRNA depart from the cell nucleus toward the cytoplasm. In the cytoplasm, the mRNA is translated into proteins by the ribosomes. - © This image is for illustration only and subject to copyright and may not be used or copied in any way without prior permission from Science Photo Library http://www.sciencephoto.com