Nobel Laureate Dr. Ada Yonath to speak at IBBR

Dr. Ada Yonath will present a seminar titled "The Ribosome: Its Tiny Enemies and Hints About Its Origin" at IBBR on Wednesday October 20th, 2010 at 10 AM. The seminar is open to the public and will be presented in the IBBR Shady Grove Auditorium. Refreshments will be provided.

Dr. Yonath focuses on the mechanisms underlying protein biosynthesis, by ribosomal crystallography, a research line she pioneered over twenty years ago despite considerable skepticism of the international scientific community.   Ribosomes translate RNA into protein and because they have slightly different structures in microbes, when compared to eukaryotes, such as human cells, they are often a target for antibiotics. She determined the complete high-resolution structures of both ribosomal subunits and discovered within the otherwise asymmetric ribosome, the universal symmetrical region that provides the framework and navigates the process of polypeptide polymerization. Consequently she showed that the ribosome is a ribozyme that places its substrates in stereochemistry suitable for peptide bond formation and for substrate-mediated catalysis. Two decades ago she visualized the path taken by the nascent proteins, namely the ribosomal tunnel, and recently revealed the dynamics elements enabling its involvement in elongation arrest, gating, intra-cellular regulation and nascent chain trafficking into their folding space.

Additionally, Yonath elucidated the modes of action of over twenty different antibiotics targeting the ribosome, illuminated mechanisms of drug resistance and synergism, deciphered the structural basis for antibiotic selectivity and showed how it plays a key role in clinical usefulness and therapeutic effectiveness, thus paving the way for structure-based drug design.

For enabling ribosomal crystallography Yonath introduced a novel technique, cryo bio-crystallography, which became routine in structural biology and allowed intricate projects otherwise considered formidable.  

At the Weizmann Institute, Yonath is the incumbent of the Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Professorial Chair.

Yonath is a member of the National Academy of Sciences; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities; the European Academy of Sciences and Art and the European Molecular Biology Organization.

Her awards and honors include the following:

• In 2000, the first European Crystallography Prize;
• In 2002, the Israel Prize, for chemistry;
• In 2006, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (co-recipient with George Feher) "for ingenious structural discoveries of the ribosomal machinery of peptide-bond formation and the light-driven primary processes in photosynthesis";
• In 2007, the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize;
• In 2008, she became the first Israeli woman to win the L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science for her vital work identifying how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics;
• In 2009, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (co-recipient with Thomas Steitz and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan). She was the first Israeli woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize;
• As well as the Harvey Prize, the Kilby Prize, the Cotton Medal of the US Chemical Society, the Anfinsen Award of the International Protein Society, the Paul Karrer Gold Medal from the University of Zurich, the University of Southern California's Massry Award and Medal, the Datta Medal of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies, the Fritz Lipmann Award of the German Biochemical Society and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University.