Cambridge scientist scoops Nobel Prize for Chemistry

A scientist at Cambridge University has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work that has led to the development of new antibiotics.
(L-R) Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz of the US and Israel's Ada Yonath win the Nobel Chemistry Prize 2009 Photo: AFP

Dr Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a senior research fellow at Trinity College Cambridge, has scooped the prize for his work at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

The physicist was awarded for his contribution in developing an atom-by-atom map of the mysterious, life-giving section of a cell, known as a ribosome. The breakthrough has been essential for progress in the field of 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.

They showed how the ribosome, which produces protein, functions 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 in Stockholm said in a statement.

His success follows hard on the heels of Chinese-born Briton Charles Kao being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics yesterday.

Dr Ramakrishnan, 57, is one of three winners of the chemistry prize for using x-ray crystallography, a technique which uses x-rays to determine atomic arrangements, to create a model of the DNA ribosome structure.

He won a third of the prize along with Thomas Steitz from Yale University and Ada Yonath from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

He said: "I have to say that I am deeply indebted to all of the brilliant associates, students and post docs who worked in my lab as science is a highly collaborative enterprise.

"The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the University of Utah supported this work and the collegiate atmosphere there made it all possible.

"The idea of supporting long term basic research like that at LMB does lead to breakthroughs, the ribosome is already starting to show its medical importance."

Dr Ramakrishnan is a US citizen and was born in Tamil Nadu, India in 1952.

He currently works as a senior scientist and is a group leader at the structural studies division of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

A statement on the Nobel Prize website reads said the research had led to antibiotics and the "saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering".