Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan is a structural biologist at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the Medical Research Council located in Cambridge, England and he is a fellow of Trinity College,Cambridge
Early Life
- Born in the temple town of Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu in 1952
- Completed Pre university studies in Annamalai University
- Ramakrishnan earned his B.Sc. in Physics (1971) from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in Gujarat
- 1976 - Ph.D Physics in Ohio University
- Spent a year taking classes in biology at the University of California, San Diego while transitioning from theoretical physics to biology.
- 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 physics to biology.
- As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, he worked on a neutron-scattering map of the small ribosomal subunit of E Coli. He has been studying ribosome structure ever since.
- He is the seventh Indian or of Indian origin to win the prestigious award.
Research Activities
He has published more than 95 research papers, and he first started publishingin 1977.In the August 26, 2000 issue of Nature, Ramakrishnan along with his his co-workers, published the structure of the small ribosomal subunit of Thermus thermophilus, a heat-stable bacterium related to one found in the Yellowstone hot springs He also published three papers about his ribosome research in the August 26, 1999, and September 21, 2000, issues of the journal Nature.
This was followed by studies that provided structural insights into the mechanism that ensures the fidelity of protein biosynthesis. More recently, his laboratory has determined the atomic structure of the whole ribosome in complex with its tRNA and mRNA ligands. Ramakrishnan is also known for his past work on histone and chromatin structure.With this 5.5 Angstrom-resolution structure, Ramakrishnan's group identified key portions of the RNA and, using previously determined structures, positioned seven of the subunit's proteins
Ramakrishnan was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with 2 other scientists,Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath. He will be awarded the Nobel Prize and along with that one-third of the total prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.4 million), in a ceremony whic will take place in Stockholm on December 10.and this made him the seventh Indian or person of Indian origin to win the Nobel Prize.
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