Science a family tradition for Nobel Prize winner

All work and no play have certainly not made Venkatraman Ramakrishnan a dull boy. As a young lad in Baroda, he would cycle straight back from school to his lab at home, working away religiously on some experiment. His genes were quite literally steeped in science. After all, mum Rajalakshmi and dad CV Ramakrishnan helped found the biochemistry faculty at Gujarat’s Maharaja Sayyaji Rao University. And though she isn’t around today, mum knew that one day her son would get the ultimate prize.

The 58-year-old India born scientist, who migrated to the US in the early seventies, was recently named Nobel Prize winner along with his peers, American Thomas A. Steitz and Israeli Ada E. Yonath for “studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”.

The trio has detailed exactly how information contained in the DNA is translated into life - a process that has benefited the fight against infectious diseases.

An honoured but deeply humbled Ramakrishnan who still cycles to work at the multiple Nobel-winning Cambridge lab MRC, has said that he is “deeply indebted to all of the brilliant associates, students and post docs who worked in my lab, as science is a highly collaborative enterprise.”

“Ribosomes produce proteins, which in turn control the chemistry in all living organisms. As ribosomes are crucial to life, they are also a major target for new antibiotics. An understanding of the ribosome’s innermost workings is important for a scientific understanding of life. This knowledge can be put to a practical and immediate use; many of today’s antibiotics cure various diseases by blocking the function of bacterial ribosomes,” the Nobel committee stated while announcing the award.

“This year’s three laureates have all generated 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity’s suffering”, the committee further added.

All three scientists have used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

Inside every cell in all organisms, there are DNA molecules, which contain the blueprints for how a human being, a plant or a bacterium, looks and functions. But the DNA molecule is passive - the blueprints become transformed into living matter through the work of ribosomes.

Based upon the information in DNA, ribosomes make proteins: oxygentransporting haemoglobin, antibodies of the immune system, hormones such as insulin, the collagen of the skin, or enzymes that break down sugar. There are tens of thousands of proteins in the body and they all have different forms and functions. They build and control life at the chemical level.

Congratulating Ramakrishnan, Prime

Ramakrishnan’s basic research on the arrangement of atoms in the ribosome could help researchers to design antibiotics to treat people who are infected with a bacterium that has developed antibiotic resistance, for example some of the strains of bacteria that cause tuberculosis.

Minister Manmohan Singh said it was a matter of great pride for the country and also a tribute to India’s educational system and the teaching community.

In a statement, the prime minister said: “I warmly congratulate you on the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009. This high honour is just and due recognition of your exceptional scientific achievements in your chosen field of study.”

“It is a matter of great pride for India that a brilliant scientist, who has gained the in our country and the dedication of the teaching community that we are able to nurture such international excellence in the sciences,” he said.

The prime minister said the work Ramakrishnan has done to extend the frontiers of molecular biology “will be an inspiration to thousands of Indian scientists, researchers and technologists, who strive to follow in your footsteps

President Pratibha Patil also congratulated the Indian-born scientist.

The president has said she is very proud to hear of the news and is happy that Professor Ramakrishnan’s pursuit of understanding the structure and function of the ribosome has been recognised, a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said.

The president hopes that the work will one day help in bringing better cure for those who suffer from incurable bacterial infections, it said.

Venky as he is fondly known to friends and family is the third Nobel Prize winner from the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Born in the temple town of Chidambaram in 1952, Ramakrishnan is a senior research fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Britain, since 2008, while Steitz is Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics at Yale University in the US and Yonath is at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

The MRC has said Ramakrishnan’s research could lead to the development of on the back of such discoveries that we can continue to drive translation into benefits for human health”, according to the MRC.

According to the World Health Organisation, tuberculosis is spreading at the rate of one new infection every second. In 2007, there were 9.27 million new cases - 500,000 of them resistant to drugs and 50,000 “extensively drug resistant”.

The MRC said Ramakrishnan’s basic research on the arrangement of atoms in the ribosome could help researchers to design antibiotics to treat people who are infected with a bacterium that has developed antibiotic resistance, for example some of the strains of bacteria that cause tuberculosis.

“Better targeting of the bacterial ribosome should also help to avoid negative effects on human cells thereby reducing the side effects of taking antibiotics,” the MRC said in a statement.

Ramakrishnan did his BSc in physics from Maharaja Sayajirao University before moving to the US for further studies. He earned his Ph.D in Physics from Ohio University and later worked at the University of California from 1976-78. During his stint at the varsity, Ramakrishnan conducted a research with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist and later designed his own 2-year transition from theoretical physics to biology.

As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale

University, he worked on a neutronscattering map of the small ribosomal subunit of E Coli. He has been studying ribosome structure ever since.

Indian Australians would also be excited to note that his family briefly lived in Adelaide in the early sixties.

Nobel for Ramakrishnan: Gujarat’s MSU celebrates

As Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with two others Wednesday, the Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) in this Gujarat city - where he did graduation in physics - reacted with pride and joy.

“We knew one day he will win a Nobel prize,” said J.S. Bandukwala, a retired professor of nuclear physics and civil rights activist as he recalled the Tamil boy who grew up in Vadodara, graduated in physics from here and then went to the US for further studies.

While the honour for Venky - as his classmates used to call him - was a matter of pride for students, there were few in the present lot on the campus who could have heard of him.

He last visited the university to deliver a lecture Jan 31, 2005, leaving students and teachers impressed.

“A very simple person of high intellectual calibre,” remembered N. Singh as he talked about the interaction he had at the meet.

Born to academician parents in Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu in 1951, Venkatraman studied in the Rosary High School before graduating in physics in 1971. His father was a well-known teacher in the science faculty and his mother taught home science in the same university. They both retired in 1985 and left to join their son and daughter, who was doing medical research, in the US.