Professor Dr Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Research Priorities: Ribosome, protein biosynthesis, proteins, translation, crystal structure, antibiotics
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan is an Indian-British-American structural biologist. In 2009, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with the US-american molecular biologist Thomas A. Steitz and the Israeli structural biologist Ada Yonath. The three researchers have decoded the ribosome, the protein factory of the cell, described its three-dimensional structure and elucidated the mechanism of protein production.
Ribosomes are molecule complexes consisting of hundreds of thousands of atoms. They are divided into two subunits. In protein biosynthesis, ribosomes translate genetic information into proteins. This process is known as translation. Proteins assume many tasks in organisms and are responsible for the entire metabolic process. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan’s research has contributed to the understanding of translation. Using x-ray structural analysis, he investigated the ribosomes of the bacteria Thermus thermophilus and – in the same year as the Israeli structural biologist Ada Yonath – decoded the smaller subunit’s structure. At almost the exact same time, American biochemist Thomas Steitz published the first crystal structure of the larger subunit. The knowledge gained by the three researchers has contributed to the understanding of protein creation – one of the basic life processes.
In his further research work, Ramakrishnan investigated the ribosome subunit’s binding to various antibiotics. Many of the antibiotic substances latch on to the bacteria's ribosomes and inhibit these. However, the increase in antibiotic resistance is a challenge for medicine. Only a few substances are still available as reserve antibiotics. Ramakrishnan and his colleagues hope that their research will help to develop a new generation of antibiotics which can more specifically inhibit the protein synthesis of bacteria ribosomes and thus cause less resistance.
Over the last years Venkatraman Ramakrishnan’s work group has focused on exploring which factors start the translation process in a protein’s genetic information. The researcher was able to identify at least twelve factors that bind to the small subunit of the ribosome and thus give the starting signal for the ribosome to read the mRNA step by step. The better researchers understand the regular translation pathway, the earlier they will be able to detect the fatal deregulation that can result in tumour diseases or neuronal degeneration. Alongside x-ray structural analysis, high-resolution electron microscopy provides biochemistry with deeper insights into the translation process.