Nobel Prize: Chemistry
Like the physics and medicine prizes, the 2009 Nobel prize in chemistry was split between three researchers: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Thomas A. Steitz, at Yale University, and Ada E. Yonath, at Weizmann Institute of Science. The three were honored for their work on the structure of the ribosome. The bacterial ribosome is the target of most antibiotics, and understanding how the bacterial ribosome is structured is launchpad for developing structure-based drugs to combat drug-resistant bacteria.
Read the Nobel scientific background report, or check out some of the primary research reports:
- Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
- Thomas A. Steitz
(click the right-hand link, ‘Search PubMed for Steitz Lab Publications’) - Ada E. Yonath