Nobel Laureate Venki Ramakrishnan Speaks in Zhejiang University Global Lecture Series

  Prof. Venki Ramakrishnan, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009, delivered a talk titled “Using electron microscopy to study the ribosome” as part of the Zhejiang University Global Lecture Series at Zhejiang University on September 28. The lecture was chaired by Prof. Feng Xinhua, Dean of the Life Sciences Institute.

  Prof. Venki Ramakrishnan is the current president of the Royal Society. He was awarded the Louis Jeannette Prize for Medicine in 2007 and shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with another two scientists "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome” in 2009. He used x-ray crystallography to look at atoms that formed the ribosome and reveal the function of the ribosome at the atomic level. He is still committed to research into the structure and function of the ribosome and the effect of antibiotics on the ribosome.

  Prof. Ramakrishnan described some highlights of obtaining molecular structures in the past 100 years and focused on how recent developments in electron microscopy are creating a new range of possibilities to visualize biological structures. He demonstrated the high-resolution structures of the entire ribosome at several points along the translation pathway, leading to insights into decoding, translocation and termination. He elaborated on the structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit and its complex with several antibiotics as well as its mRNA and tRNA ligands.