Venki Ramakrishnan
British-American structural biologist, Nobel prize winner and author
Venkatraman 'Venki' Ramakrishnan is a Nobel Prize-winning biologist whose many scientific contributions include his work on the atomic structure of the ribosome. As the site within living cells where the genetic information is read to synthesise proteins from amino acids, improved understanding of the ribosome has yielded many fundamental biological insights.
He determined the atomic structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit followed by structures of the entire ribosome in many different states and in complexes with several antibiotics. More recently, he has been using electron microscopy to visualise ribosomes in action in higher organisms. This work has advanced our understanding of how the ribosome works and how antibiotics inhibit it. In the past he has also worked on histone and chromatin structure, which help us to understand how DNA is organised in cells.
Venki received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on ribosomal structure and was knighted in 2012. He is a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina and EMBO, and a Foreign Member of the Indian National Science Academy. He was President of the Royal Society from November 2015 until November 2020.
Visit website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venki_Ramakrishnan
Details last updated 10-May-2024
Venki Ramakrishnan Creations
Why We Die
The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality, a book written by Venki Ramakrishnan