Trio’s NOBEL effort to improve medicines

Two Americans and an Israeli scientist won the 2009 Noble Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday (07.10.2009) for atom by atom mapping of the protein making the factories within cells – a feat that has spurred the development of antibiotics.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Israeli Ada Yonath’s work on ribosomes has been fundamental to the scientific understanding of life.

Yonath, 70, is the fourth woman to win the Nobel chemistry prize and the first since 1964, when Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin of Britain received the award. “I’m really, really happy,” Yonath said. “I thought it was wonderful when the discovery came. It was a series of discoveries… We still don’t’ know every, everything, but we progressed a lot.”

Ribosomes are crucial to life because they produce the proteins that control the chemistry of plants, animals and humans. Working separately, the three laureates used a method called X-ray crystallography to pinpoint the positions of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

Their three dimensional models show how different antibiotics bind to ribosomes – an understanding that has helped other researchers develop new drugs to fight bacterial infections.

“These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity’s suffering,” the academy said in its announcement.

Many of today’s antibiotics cure diseases by blocking the function of bacterial ribosomes, the citation said. “Without functional ribosomes, bacteria cannot survive. This is why ribosomes are such an important target for new antibiotics.”

The work was published in 2000. While many Nobel winners are honored for joint work, this year’s chemistry winners were competing with each other, award committee member Mans Ehrenberg said.

Their work builds on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and, more directly, on the work done by James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, who won the 1962 Nobel prize in medicine for mapping DNA’s double helix, the citation said.

In 2006, Roger D Kornberg won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for X-ray structures that showed how information is copied to messenger RNA molecules, which carry information from DNA to the ribosomes. “Now, one of the las pieces of the puzzles has been added – under standing how proteins are made,” said Professor Gunnar von Heijne of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Blind British boy sees with his ears

     A seven year old boy, who was born blind, can now see with his ears using a technique similar to that used by bats and dolphins.

     Lucas Murray, nicknamed bat boy, can see by clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth. He can find out where and how far big objects are by listening to the echo that bounces back. This technique is similar to echolocation used by bats and dolphins, which measure height and distance of an object by the echo of the sound emitted by those objects.

     Lucas loves playing basketball and even goes rock climbing. “I love basket ball and it is much easier to play now that I can use my click to find out where the hoop is. It was quite hard to learn what the echoes meant at first, but now I find it a lot easier.” Lucas was told.

     The technique was pioneered 41 year old Daniel Kish of California, who himself is blind. He spent three days working with Lucas and his family two years ago. “While Daniel taught Lucas echolocation and cane skills, he taught us that the most important lesson as parents is to let him do it himself. Lucas picked up the clicking quite quickly and very soon we could tell it was having a real impact on his life.” Sarah Murray was told.

     “When people see him walking or running around and hear that he is blind, they are just blown away,” his mother said.

     What more, Lucas can even estimate the size of an object by the intensity of the echo. According to him, a smaller object would reflect only less of the sound wave.