Nobel Prize in Chemistry

2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Wednesday October 7, 2009

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (UK), Thomas A. Steitz (USA), and Ada E. Yonath (Israel) for "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome". The ribosome is the cellular machinery that translates the message encoded by the genetic code into proteins (translation). We understand the structure of ribosomes because the winners of this year's Nobel Prize used x-ray crystallography to image them. They then used three-dimensional models to describe how antibiotics bind to the ribosome. The models can be used to help develop new antibiotics, based on an understanding of the molecular conformation of the ribosomes in every cell.