Nobel Prize Laureate Venki Ramakrishnan at the Biozentrum
In 2013, an Indian TV channel named Venki Ramakrishnan one of the “25 greatest global living Indians”. On 13th October, 2015, the structural biologist and Nobel Prize laureate will visit the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. As a part of the Biozentrum Lectures series, the scientist will talk about the structure and function of the ribosome, the molecular machine that translates genetic information into proteins. The Biozentrum Lecture is open to all interested.
05 October 2015
For almost forty years, Venki Ramakrishnan has been investigating the ribosome. In 2009, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”. In the upcoming public Biozentrum Lecture, the famous structural biologist from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, will talk about the structure determination of ribosomal subunits, and, in particular, how termination signals for protein synthesis are recognized by ribosomes.
Regulation of protein synthesis by the ribosome
Ribosomes are cellular nanomachines assembled from RNA and protein molecules, which translate genetic information into functional proteins in a process called translation. Their organization and mode of action is highly conserved across all kingdoms of life. The determination of the detailed structures of small and large ribosomal subunits has provided comprehensive insights into the decoding of mRNA information and the synthesis of new proteins. In his lecture, the structural biologist Venki Ramakrishnan will focus on how ribosomes recognize stop codons during translation and shed light on the fundamental differences between eukaryotic and bacterial translational termination.
From Physics to Structural Biology
Venki Ramakrishnan is a group leader and Deputy Director at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, and President Elect of the Royal Society. Trained in physics at Baroda University, India, he obtained a PhD in physics from Ohio State University in 1976 before moving into molecular biology.
As a Postdoc at Yale University he began to work on ribosomes, his lifelong interest. In 1995, he became Professor in Biochemistry at Utah University. Four years later, he moved to his current position at the MRC.
Ramakrishnan studies ribosomes by combining biochemical analysis with structure determination. He elucidated the structure of a small ribosomal subunit and key principles of ribosome function.
For his outstanding scientific achievements he was awarded numerous prizes, including the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine, 2007, the Sir Hans Krebs Medal, 2012, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry shared with Tom Steitz and Ada Yonath, 2009. Furthermore, he was awarded a knighthood in 2012.
The public Biozentrum Lecture held by Venki Ramakrishnan will take place, on 13th October, 2015, at 6.15 pm in Lecture Hall 1 at the Pharmazentrum, Klingelbergstrasse 50.
