Science at Collins

Visiting reference hours with your science liaison in Harned hall will begin on March 3, 2010. Over the last few semesters, most of the questions I’ve gotten have been leading up to or after midterms, so I’m adjusting hours to better match that pattern.

In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to email, phone (x3649), or drop by my office (Library 117)  if you have a question!

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

The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine this year went to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak, for their work on “how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase”.

Learn more with some key publications you can find at Collins Library:

• Szostak JW, Blackburn EH. Cloning yeast telomeres on linear plasmid vectors. Cell 1982; 29:245-255.
  In print at Collins
• Greider CW, Blackburn EH. Identification of a specific telomere terminal transferase activity in Tetrahymena extracts. Cell 1985; 43:405-13.
  In print at Collins
• Greider CW, Blackburn EH. A telomeric sequence in the RNA of Tetrahymena telomerase required for telomere repeat synthesis. Nature 1989; 337:331-7.
  This issue in print at Collins; 1990 to the present online.

Or watch the prize announcement or a quick talk about the discovery honored.