A scientist who made use of iridium in ground-breaking tests on the structure and function of the ribosome has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Nine years ago, Thomas A Steitz, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HMMI) Investigator at Yale University, conducted a series of experiments using a technique known as X-ray crystallography.

He attached osmium and iridium atoms to a number of 50S sub-unit crystals to act as landmarks during attempts to understand the ribosome, which is a large molecular complex of RNA and proteins.

The major breakthrough arrived when Mr Steitz and colleagues realised that the proteins were penetrating into the interior of the ribosome, thus allowing them to prove that it depended solely on RNA as its catalytic molecule.

"Since Thomas Cech had shown that RNA could have catalytic activity, we had suspected that the 50S sub-unit was basically a ribozyme," he told HMMI News.

"However, there was no proof. Nobody had been able to show that the RNA by itself showed catalytic properties in the absence of the protein.

"Now we can see that part of the reason is probably the nature of these proteins that are holding the ribosome together."

According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Mr Steitz is now set to collect the prestigious Nobel Prize award, which will add to his Pfizer Prize from the American Chemical Society.

Also in line for the award based on their ribosome work are Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Ada E Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Ribosomes have become particularly crucial in modern medical treatments such as antibiotics as bacteria need them to be functional in order to survive.

Source:

HHMI Researcher Thomas Steitz Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry (07/10/09)

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