The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 was given to three scientists who produced atom-by-atom maps of the mysterious, life giving ribosome that allows researchers to produce powerful new antibiotics. The ribosome present in the DNA translates the information in the DNA to life. Ada Yonath from Israel and US scientists Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz shared the 10 million Swedish crown (US$1.4 million) prize for showing how the ribosome operates at the atomic level. According to the Nobel Committee for Chemistry at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, since ribosomes are crucial to life, they are major target for new antibiotics.
A method known as X-Ray crystallography was used to pinpoint each of the hundreds of thousands of atoms present in the ribosome. The technique involves impinging X-rays at a crystal. The rays are scattered when they impinge on the atoms and by looking at how they spread out, scientists can determine where atoms are positioned. Yonath was the first person to research into this area when she first tried the method on the ribosome. She began by taking a microorganism found in the nearby Dead Sea and crystallizing its ribosomes by freezing them at nearly minus 200 degree Celsius. But it took another 20 years before a full map was made. The three scientists arrived to the same conclusion almost simultaneously in 2000, publishing crystal structures that were sharply enough defined to locate atoms. The research has vast implications in the field of medicine, since fifty percent of all antibiotics target the ribosome, this finding can lead to the development of other substances that can block and disturb bacteria in our bodies.