Ada Yonath at ITQB
20-Aug-2014
When others thought it impossible, Ada Yonath concentrated on obtaining the structure from the ribosome, a complex cellular machine that creates proteins from RNA. For her persistence, which opened the field to others, she received in 2009 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz “for studies on the structure and function of the ribosome”.
Today, Ada Yonath is still an active protein crystallography researcher at the
Weizmann Institute in Israel. In her research, Ada Yonath attempts to determine the structural bases for processes involved in protein biosynthesis and their inhibition by antibiotics or similar compounds, including elucidation of mechanisms used for acquiring resistance, and the properties utilized for the discrimination between pathogens and eukaryotes, namely those allowing for clinical usefulness.