Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Facts
© The Nobel Foundation. Photo: U. Montan
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009
Born: 30 November 1951, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, India
Affiliation at the time of the award: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”
Prize share: 1/3
Work
An organism's vital functions are managed by large, complex protein molecules produced in cells' ribosomes. There, genetic information from messenger RNA is translated into chains of amino acids that then build proteins. Using a method known as x-ray crystallography, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and other researchers were able to collaborate to map the structure of ribosomes, made up of hundreds of thousands of atoms, in 2000. Among other applications, this has been important in the production of antibiotics.
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