Israeli biochemist Ada Yonath dies at 87 — The Guardian

Israeli crystallographer and biochemist Ada Yonath, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009 for her research into the structure of ribosomes, has died at the age of 87. The Guardian reports.

Yonath devoted decades to studying the molecular structure of ribosomes, cellular structures that synthesize proteins. At the beginning of her research, many scientists considered attempts to determine the structure of the ribosome futile because of its small size, irregular shape and lack of internal symmetry.

Ribosome research

In the late 1970s, Yonath noticed a description of polar bears' winter hibernation: before it, their ribosomes become orderly arranged in cells and remain functional for months. This prompted the scientist to look for a way to crystallize ribosomes in order to study their internal structure using X-rays and electron microscopy.

She worked with the thermophilic bacterium Geobacillus stearothermophilus, which occurs near thermal springs and in desert sands. After more than 25,000 attempts in the mid-1980s, Yonath succeeded in crystallizing the bacterium. She also froze it to −185 °C, stabilizing its internal structure and protecting it from X-ray radiation.

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Nobel Prize and antibiotics

In 2001 and 2002, after nearly two decades of work, Yonath's team created a three-dimensional map of the bacterial ribosome. In 2009, she shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with biologist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and biochemist Thomas Steitz. Yonath became the fourth woman to receive the award.

Ribosome research was important for the development of antibiotics: many such drugs bind to sites on bacterial ribosomes and prevent bacteria from multiplying. Yonath explained the mechanism of action of more than 20 antibiotics and also studied ways to overcome antibiotic resistance.

Yonath was born in Jerusalem to a family of Jewish emigrants from Poland. She studied chemistry and biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received her doctorate from the Weizmann Institute of Science. From 1970, she researched ribosomes at the Weizmann Institute, where she worked until the end of her career.