Ada Yonath Biography

When she decided to study ribosomes, the cell's protein manufacturers, many labeled her a dreamer, recalls Prof. Ada Yonath of the Structural Biology Department. The structure of the ribosome would provide scientists with unprecedented insight into how the genetic code is translated into proteins; however, by the late 1970s, top scientific teams around the world had already tried and failed to crystallize these complex proteins and R.N.A structures so that they could be studied. Yonath and colleagues took a remarkable 25,000 attempts before they succeeded in producing the first ribosome crystals in 1980, whether they were dreamers or not. And their task had only barely begun. Yonath and her colleagues would continue to refine their technique over the following 20 years. In 2000, Yonath's teams at Weizmann and the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg, Germany, determined the full spatial structure of both subunits of a bacterial ribosome for the first time. This work was named one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of the year by Science magazine. The next year, Yonath's team figured out how antibiotics may kill harmful bacteria by attaching to their ribosomes and stopping them from generating essential proteins. Yonath's findings, which have sparked much research throughout the world, have now progressed beyond the fundamental structure. She has uncovered the mysteries of cross-resistance to multiple antibiotic families, as well as how genetic information is processed and how the ribosome's intrinsic flexibility contributes to antibiotic selectivity. Her discoveries are critical in the development of improved antibiotics. Prof. Yonath is the Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Professor of Structural Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. The Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly funds Prof. Ada Yonath's research.

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