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| Nobel prize for chemistry of life | |
| (21 minutes later) | |
| The 2009 chemistry Nobel prize has been awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath. | |
| The prize is awarded for the study of the structure and function of the ribosome - the cell's protein factory. | |
| The ribosome translates genetic code into proteins - which are the building blocks of all living organisms. | |
| It is also the main target of new antibiotics, which combat bacterial strains that have developed resistance to traditional antibiotic drugs. | |
| These new drugs work by blocking the function of ribosomes in bacterial cells, preventing them from making the proteins they need to survive. | |
| It was announced during a press conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, during which they three winners were described as "warriors in the struggle of the rising tide of incurable bacterial infections". | |
| Professor Ramakrishnan is based at the Medical Research Council's Molecular Biology Laboratories in Cambridge, UK. | Professor Ramakrishnan is based at the Medical Research Council's Molecular Biology Laboratories in Cambridge, UK. |
| Thomas Steitz is based at Yale University in the US and Ada Yonath is from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. | |
| The prize is to be shared equally between the three scientists, who all contributed to revealing the ribosome's huge and complex molecular structure in remarkable detail. | |
| Professor David Garner, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, described the three as "great scientists" and said their work was of enormous significance. |