Noble Prize for Chemistry 2009 Reiterates the Significance of Basic Sciences

“Ultimately, when you look at any biological question it becomes a chemical problem, because bio is done by molecules and molecules use chemical laws. It’s important to realize that support for basic science is the seed that allows the medical applications and technology to grow.”

-Prof. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Noble Laureate, Chemistry, 2009.

The 2009 Chemistry Nobel Prize has been awarded to Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Dr. Thomas Steitz and Dr. Ada Yonath. Their work is based on biological cells, experiments are done using physics tools and the whole process is explained by chemistry. Mathematics is anyways involved as it is the language of the basic sciences. This article tries to understand the role of basic sciences in Prof. Ramakrishnan’s work.

All living beings are made up of cells. The cells have nucleus inside them. The nucleus contains the basic instructions that run our whole body at large. These set of instructions are called chromosomes. The chromosomes are made up of molecules called Deoxyribonucleic acid i.e. DNA. A segment of DNA molecules forming a single instruction is called as genes.

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the molecular structure of DNA. They won the 1962 noble prize for medicine. However, they could not understand how the DNA (a chemical molecule) became a living thing (biological system). The research work of Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Dr. Thomas Steitz and Dr. Ada Yonath solved an important part of this problem.

The Research and the Role of Basic Sciences:
Role of Chemistry: The genes reach the ribosome in chunks. They are transported there by molecules called Ribonucleic acid or RNA. Ribosomes are the cell’s protein factory. They convert the genetic instructions (biological codes) into proteins (chemical molecules), the building blocks of all living organisms. This is where biology gives way to chemistry.

Role of Physics: They studied the structure of the ribosome. They used the common experimental physics technique of x-ray crystallography to study the molecular structure of ribosome.They separated these molecules from the cells, purified them and converted them in to crystals. Using x-rays and Bragg’s law of diffraction in physics they learnt about the structure of the ribosome. This helped in understanding the translation process of genetic instructions to chemical proteins.

Implications of this research on Medicine:

“We still don’t know exactly how it works, but we have made a tremendous amount of progress as a direct result of knowing what it looks like.

“It’s the difference between knowing that when you put gasoline in a car and press on a pedal, it goes. But if you know that the gasoline gets ignited and pushes down pistons and drives the wheels, that’s a new level of understanding.”

– Professor Ramakrishnan to BBC News.

Powerful antibiotic drugs can now be manufactured. These drugs would block the ribosome in the cells of the harmful bacteria from producing proteins. Ultimately, the bacteria will die.

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