- Person
- Ada Yonath
- Lived
- 1939–2026
- Field
- Crystallography
- From
- Israeli
The story
The ribosome is the cell's protein factory. Built from dozens of proteins and long strands of RNA, it reads the genetic instructions carried by messenger RNA and links amino acids, one by one, into protein chains. Every living thing depends on it. Yet for decades no one could see its structure in enough detail to tell which parts did the chemical work of joining amino acids together.
Ada Yonath, a crystallographer at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, set out at the end of the 1970s to solve that structure, a task many thought impossible. Her team grew the first ribosome microcrystals at the start of the 1980s and invented cryo-bio-crystallography, freezing the crystals so they could survive X-ray bombardment.
Progress came step by step. In the mid-1980s her team glimpsed a tunnel running through the large ribosomal subunit, which they proposed was the path along which a newly made protein chain leaves the ribosome, and by 1993 she had visualised it. By the mid-1990s other leading groups had adopted her methods, and at the end of the decade the resolution barrier was broken. In 2000 and 2001 her group published complete high-resolution structures of both ribosomal subunits.
Inside the otherwise asymmetric ribosome she discovered a universal symmetrical region that provides the framework for linking amino acids and guides the process. From this she showed that the ribosome is a ribozyme, an RNA-based machine that places its building blocks in exactly the right geometry for the peptide bond between amino acids to form.
Because the structure of this active site has been extraordinarily well preserved through evolution, Yonath proposed that the symmetrical region may be a vestige of a primordial apparatus for making peptide bonds, a clue to how life's protein-making machinery first arose. Her work, together with that of Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz, was recognised with the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for showing what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level.
Why it matters
Yonath's discovery reshaped scientists' understanding of one of life's most fundamental machines and opened new questions about how life began.
About Ada Yonath
Israeli crystallographer who spent two decades solving the structure of the ribosome, revealed how antibiotics work, and became the first Israeli woman to win a Nobel Prize.
More about Ada Yonath
Ada Yonath in the news
Sources
- Ada Yonath Wikipedia
- Ada E. Yonath: Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 NobelPrize.org
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