Ramakrishnan, Venkatraman

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (United States), Thomas A. Steitz (United States), and Ada E. Yonath (Israel) for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome. Ramakrishnan, Steitz, and Yonath are responsible for uncovering the structure and function of the ribosome at the atomic level, and it is for that work that they share this Nobel Prize. They used X-ray crystallography to individually map each atom that makes up the ribosome it consists of hundreds of thousands of atoms The ribosome plays a crucial role in each cell, as it is responsible for the synthesis of proteins. On the basis of their results, these researchers have also developed models showing how antibiotics bind to the ribosome. 

For their studies on the structure and mode of action of ribosomes, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Medical Research Council, UK), Thomas Steitz (Yale University, U.S.) and Ada Yonath (Weizmann Institute, Israel) were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz, 1953 Hermann Staudinger... 

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