Ada Yonat from the Weizmann Institute won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

(The news is updated during the day) The award is given to her and two American researchers for the discovery of ribosomes - the engines that translate DNA commands into proteins that are essential in all stages of life

For all the articles about Ada Yonat's works on the Hadaan website

The Nobel Prize Committee in Chemistry for 2009 decided to award this year's prize to one of the basic processes of life, the ribosomes' translation of the information in DNA into life. The ribosomes produce their proteins, which in turn control the chemistry of all living things. Ribosomes are essential for life, they are also a main target for the new antibiotics.

This year the prize is awarded to Lonkraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Straits and Ada Yonet for showing what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level. All three used a method known as X-ray crystallography to map the location of each of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

Inside every cell in every living thing there are DNA molecules. They prepare the template that determines how the person, the plant or the bacterium will behave or function.

This master plan becomes living matter through the action of the ribosomes. Based on the information in the DNA, the ribosomes produce proteins such as the hemoglobin that binds to oxygen in the body, antibodies in the immune system, hormones such as insulin, the collagen in the skin or enzymes that break down sugar. There are tens of thousands of proteins in the body and each of them has a different function. They construct and criticize life on a chemical level.

Understanding the inner workings of ribosomes is important to the scientific understanding of life. This knowledge can be immediately applied to practical uses. Many of today's antibiotics fight diseases by blocking the function of the bacteria's ribosomes. Without functioning ribosomes, the bacteria cannot survive. This is why ribosomes are so important to the development of new antibiotics.

All three created three-dimensional models that showed how different antibiotics bind to ribosomes. These models are currently used by scientists with the aim of developing new antibiotics and thus help immediately to save the lives of many and reduce suffering for humanity.

Yonat, 70 years old, born in Jerusalem, began her career in 1959 studying chemistry and biophysics at the Hebrew University. She completed her doctoral thesis with honors at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. From 1970 she worked as a researcher at the Weizmann Institute, and even founded the first laboratory in Israel for protein crystallography. She is also the winner of the Israel Chemistry Research Award for 2002, in addition to many international awards and awards.
Ramakrishnan, born in India in 1952 and a US citizen, is a researcher at Ohio University and also serves as a senior researcher in the Department of Structural Studies at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK.
Thomas Steitz, a US citizen, was born in 1940 in Milwaukee, and holds a doctorate from Harvard, and he also serves as a professor of biophysics and biochemistry at the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute at Yale University.

Her groundbreaking work, which even earned her a prize, deals with deciphering the spatial structure of the ribosome by X-ray crystallography. It is a technique for examining the spatial structure of biological molecules and microscopic structures, by means of which a crystal is created from the material, it is irradiated with X-rays, and from the scattering of the radiation, conclusions are drawn about the structure of the molecule.

Yonat, as well as Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday, are the brides of the Harvey Prize awarded at the Technion. It turns out that this prestigious award is also considered one of the predictors of the Nobel Prize. So far 13 Harvey Laureates have won the Nobel Prize.

The Israeli Society of Chemistry congratulates Professor Ada Yonat
After the win, Professor Ehud Kinan, Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion, President of the Israel Chemical Society, writes:

"With a difference of only 5 years, Israel again wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Professor Ada Yonat from the Faculty of Chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science joins a club where Professors Aharon Chechanover and Abram Hershko from the Technion are already members. The Israeli Society of Chemistry, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary this year, is proud of these unequivocal proofs of the special weight of chemistry in the State of Israel on the world map."
"The two prominent areas of scientific excellence in the State of Israel have always been computer science and chemistry. The chemical industry in Israel is also notable for its contribution to the national economy, with chemical products accounting for 25% of our exports. Of the 9 presidents we have had to date, two were scientists and both, Professors Haim Weizman and Efraim Katzir, were chemists. This is a great way to prepare for 2011, which was declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Chemistry. I would like to remind all Israeli students that the science of chemistry is the basis and core of all experimental sciences, and the basis of all knowledge-intensive industries."

More on the subject on the science website

• For an interview with Ada Yonat that was published in Scientific American about a year ago - polar bears and drunken ribosomes
• The ribosome cracker - an interview for the Weizmann Institute magazine
• The mysteries of the peptide bond - Weizmann Institute magazine