Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Venkatraman " Venki " Ramakrishnan (* 1952 in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu ) is an Indian- American researcher and ribosome structural biologist.
Life and work
Ramakrishnan received in 1971 his Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Baroda in India. In 1976 he received his doctorate in physics at Ohio University for Ph. D.. Subsequently, he studied until 1978 Biology at the University of California, San Diego. As a post - graduate student, he worked from 1978 to 1982 at the Chemistry Department of Yale University. 1982 and 1983 he conducted research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and from 1983 to 1995 in the Biology Department of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. 1995 to 1999 he was a professor at the Biochemistry Department of the University of Utah. Since 1999 he conducts research at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, England, which he already knew from a stay as a visiting scientist in 1991 and 1992. Ramakrishnan is a Fellow of Trinity College at Cambridge University.
His research has among other things contributing to the mechanistic understanding of the synthesis of proteins by the ribosome ( the so-called translation) in the context of gene expression. In 2000, he appointed his group the X-ray crystal structure of the 30S subunit of the ribosome, as well as of complexes of this subunit with various antibiotics. Subsequent work has been concerned with the mechanism that underlies the accuracy of protein biosynthesis. In 2006, he explained to the atomic structure of the whole ribosome in complex with tRNA and mRNA ligands with his group. In addition to his research on the ribosome Ramakrishnan is also known for his earlier research on histone and chromatin structure. He is a member of the British Royal Society, since 2002, the European Molecular Biology Organization ( EMBO) and since 2004 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Since 2003 He was awarded along with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009 "for the studies on the structure and function of the ribosome ".
Awards
- 2007: Louis -Jeantet Prize for Medicine
- 2007: Datta Medal and Lecture, Annual Meeting of FEBS, Vienna
- 2008: Heatley Medal, British Biochemical Society
- 2009: Nobel Prize in Chemistry (together with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath )
- 2010: Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina - National Academy of Sciences
- 2010: Padma Vibhushan
- 2012: Knight / Knight Bachelor ( Kt ) in the New Year Honours.
Works
- The Green function theory of the ferroelectric phase transition in KDP. Dissertation, Ohio University, 1976.