Three scientists who discovered how the genetic code is translated into the molecules of life have won the 2009 Nobel Chemistry Prize.
They worked out the detailed form and function of the ribosome – the structure in every living cell that turns DNA into proteins, which in turn control the biochemistry of all organisms from bacteria to people.
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The SKr10m ($1.4m) prize will be shared equally between Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, England, Thomas Steitz of Yale University in the US and Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Dr Ramakrishnan’s award brings the total number of Nobel prizes won by scientists at the LMB to 14, since Francis Crick and James Watson were honoured for discovering the structure of DNA in 1953.
In a good illustration of the international nature of contemporary science, Dr Ramakrishnan was born and educated in India, worked for 25 years in the US (he is an American citizen) and moved to the UK to work at the LMB in 1999.
Prof Steitz, in contrast, is an American who has been on the Yale University faculty since 1970.
Dr Yonath is an Israeli who has been associated with the Weizmann Institute for her whole career. She is the third female Nobel laureate this year; Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider won the medicine prize on Monday.
The three chemistry laureates used a technique called X-ray crystallography to map the position of each of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.
Their three-dimensional models, built up during the 1980s and 1990s, showed scientists how the ribosome “reads” the genetic code of DNA and converts it to the protein molecules that control all biochemical processes.
Although an understanding of the ribosome’s innermost workings is important for a scientific understanding of life, the knowledge can also be put to a practical use. Many antibiotics work by blocking the function of ribosomes in bacteria. Without functional ribosomes, bacteria cannot survive.
The three researchers have all generated 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. The models are used to develop new antibiotics, some of which are in clinical trials.
