Trio wins chemistry Nobel for solving ribosome riddle

STOCKHOLM, (Reuters) – Three scientists who produced  atom-by-atom maps of the mysterious, life-giving ribosome won  the Nobel chemistry prize yesterday for a breakthrough that  has allowed researchers to develop powerful new antibiotics.  

While DNA molecules contain the blueprint for life inside  each cell of every organism, it is the ribosome that translates  that information into life.  

Israeli Ada Yonath and Americans Venkatraman Ramakrishnan  and Thomas Steitz shared the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.4  million) prize for showing how the ribosome, a kind of protein  factory, operates at the atomic level.  

“As ribosomes are crucial to life, they are also a major  target for new antibiotics,” the Nobel Committee for Chemistry  at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.  

The academy said many of today’s antibiotics cure various  diseases by blocking the function of bacterial ribosomes.  

Yonath, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in  Israel, told a news conference by telephone that she was elated  to receive the award: “It is above and beyond my dreams.”  
 
A method known as X-ray crystallography was used to pinpoint  each of the hundreds of thousands of atoms in a ribosome.  

The technique involves aiming X-rays at a crystal. The rays  scatter when they hit atoms and by looking at how they spread  out, scientists can determine where atoms are positioned.  

Yonath made the initial breakthrough at the end of the 1970s  when she first tried the method on the ribosome — a feat most  considered impossible.  

Yonath started by taking a micro-organism found in the  nearby Dead Sea and crystallising its ribosomes. She did this by  freezing them at nearly minus 200 degrees Celsius.