Indian origin scientist wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Indian origin senior scientist at the MRC Laborartory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 along with two others. The Nobel Committee announced on Wednesday that the Tamil Nadu-born Ramakrishnan shares the Nobel Prize with Thomas E Steitz (US) and Ada E Yonath (Israel) for their "studies of the structure and function of the ribosome". Ramakrishnan graduated in B.Sc. in Physics from Baroda University in 1971 and did Ph.D. in Physics in 1976 from Ohio University. "This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry awards Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A Steitz and Ada E Yonath for having showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level," the Nobel committee said. All three have used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome, it said. "This year's three Laureates have all generated 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. These models are now used by scientists to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering," the citation said.