Indian-born Ramakrishnan wins Nobel prize for chemistry
Indian-born V Ramakrishnan along with two American scientists won the prestigious 2009 Noble Prize in Chemistry. The three scientists were declared winners for mapping ribosomes the protein-producing factories within cells at the at the atomic level.
IT IS a proud moment for India as once again, its scientific brain is accorded global recognisation with Indian-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan winning the prestigious 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with two more American scientists.
These three scientists were declared winners for mapping ribosomes the protein-producing factories within cells at the atomic level. He shared the Noble prize with American Thomas E Steitz and Israeli Ada E Yonath for their “Studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.”
As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, he worked on a neutron-scattering map of the small ribosomal subunit of E Coli. He has been studying ribosome structure ever since. He has authored several important papers in academic journals. Later, he moved into biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he took a year of classes, then conducted research with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist.
Announcing the Noble prize, the Noble committee said in its citation that they were declared as winners for having showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level. 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, it said.
"This year's three Laureates have all generated 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering," the citation added.
After his postdoctoral fellowship, Ramakrishnan joined the staff of Brookhaven National Laboratory in ther US. There, he began his collaboration with Stephen White to clone the genes for several ribosomal proteins and determine their three-dimensional structures.
"This year's three Laureates have all generated 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering," the citation added.
After his postdoctoral fellowship, Ramakrishnan joined the staff of Brookhaven National Laboratory in ther US. There, he began his collaboration with Stephen White to clone the genes for several ribosomal proteins and determine their three-dimensional structures.
He was also awarded a Guggenheim fellowship during his tenure there, and he used it to make the transition to X-ray crystallography. He moved to the University of Utah in 1995 to become a professor in the Department of Biochemistry. There, he initiated his studies on protein-RNA complexes and the entire 30S subunit.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their work has been fundamental to the scientific understanding of life and has helped researchers develop antibiotic cures for various diseases. Yonath is the fourth woman to win the Nobel chemistry prize and the first since 1964, when Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin of Britain received the prize.
This year's three laureates all generated three-dimensional models that show how different antibiotics bind to ribosomes. "These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering,'' the academy said in its announcement.
"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,'' the academy said.
Each prize comes with a 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) purse, a diploma, a gold medal and an invitation to the prize ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10. The Peace Prize is handed out in Oslo.
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