Trio awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving ribosome riddle

Why is his Indian heritage noteworthy but not somebody being Jewish? Isn't he now an American citizen and thus American? You wouldn't say 'Alan Greenspan, the Jew, won a Nobel Prize'.

Quite a big deal here for the first Israeli woman to win the award and the first woman since the 1960's to receive one.

Thanks for this albertacowpoke. Please see the story on the latest news, controversies, announcement schedule and the social media tools used by the Nobel Prize Committee here.

THere is so much we dont know about chemisty and the actions with antibiotics

A quick summary for those unfamiliar:

Ribosomes get RNA, a copy of DNA made that can exit the nucleus of the cell. The ribosome, also made from nucleic acids and protein, gets the string, the coded message of the RNA.

As the RNA passes through, the three-letter code of nucleic acids are matched up with three letter complementary codes on Messenger RNA, which carries an amino acid corresponding to the three letter code.

The amino acids are then juxtaposed and combined chemically to produce a protein, which usually folds over on itself and converts into an enzyme, a biological catalyst capable of speeding up chemical reactions, without which life would be impossible.

Antibiotics usually work by interfering with the cell wall construction of the bacterium by sitting in the bacterial ribosome and interfering with protein synthesis, so stopping the walls from being built. Osmotic pressure, the tendency of water to get into the cell and expand it, then explodes the bacterium.

Some nice pictures:

The code for ordering the amino acids of a protein is written as a sequence of bases in the DNA in the nucleus. However, since DNA never leaves the nucleus and proteins are constructed by ribosomes in the cytoplasm of the cell, the instructions must somehow be carried out of the nucleus to the ribosomes.

This is accomplished when the double spiral of DNA unwinds and unzips a little at the point where the instructions for the given protein are located.

(This section of the DNA molecule is called a gene.)  While it is unzipped, this short section of the DNA molecule acts as a pattern or template for another kind of nucleicacid called RNA (ribonucleic acid)  Each adenine of the unzipped DNA attracts a uracil, U, (instead of a thymine as in DNA).  The other bases, G, T, and C attract the same partners as they do in DNA replication, G attracts C, C attracts G, and T attracts

Also in the cytoplasm are also a second kind of smaller RNA molecules called transfer RNA (tRNA.)  One end of a tRNA molecule has a special site to which only one kind of amino acid can be attached.  There are many different types of transfer RNA molecules--actually more than one for each of 18 of the 20 different amino acids found in proteins (methionine and tryptophan being the exceptions.) (Notice that the amino acids are represented by the little dots at the ends of the tRNA molecules in the diagram above.)

The other end of each RNA molecule carries a unique tag which identifies it.  The tag is written in the usual code of a nucleic acid--a sequence of bases.  Each amino acid carrying molecule has its own three letter code.  For example, the valine tRNA is labeled AAC, the alanine-transfer RNA is labeled GGC, the phenylalanine -tRNA is labeled AAA and so on.

With the strand of messenger RNA lined up at the ribosome, the base pairs again are attracted to their partners, this time the attraction is between the complementary bases of the messenger RNA and the transfer RNA.   A sequence of three nucleotides in mRNA codes for each amino acid.  This sequence is called a codon.  For a chart of the codons for each of the twenty amino acids, click here. The transfer RNAs carrying amino acids attach to the mRNA by means of base-pairing between the messenger RNA codons and the  transfer RNA "anticodons."  Each transfer RNA then donates its amino acid, in the proper order, to the growing chain of amino acids that will become the new protein.  This assembly of amino acids to form a protein, in a sequence specified by the order of nucleotides in a molecule of messenger RNA (determined, in turn, by the sequence specified by a segment of DNA in the nucleus called a gene) is called translation (i.e. translated from the "language of nucleic acids" to the "language of proteins".) 
 

Good for them.

So Ada Yonath is not the first woman though?

Aren't we all forgetting Madame Curie?And there is no such thing as Baruda University, it is M.S. University in BarOda.

I'm happy for her...what an accomplishment