DATE: 4 p.m. Thursday, July 29, 2010

EVENT: Ada Yonath, Israel’s first female Nobel laureate and the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize in chemistry in the past 45 years, will deliver the second annual Samuel Krimm Lecture in Biophysics at the University of Michigan.

She was a co-recipient of the chemistry Nobel Prize in 2009, along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz, for her ground-breaking contributions to determine the ribosomal structure.

Yonath is the Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Chair at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where she directs the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly. For many years, her research has focused on the structure and function of the ribosome, the protein-synthesizing machinery in the cell, which is composed of a large number of proteins and nucleic acid assembled into the complex ribosomal structure.

Because of its high degree of complexity, solving the structure of the ribosome required the development of new experimental approach, cryo bio-crystallography, which Yonath pioneered and which later became routine in structural biology.

Since the ribosome is critical for protein synthesis, many antibiotics are targeted against microbial ribosomes. Yonath has elucidated the modes of action of about 20 different antibiotics targeting the ribosome. These studies have illuminated important mechanisms of drug resistance and synergism, helped explain the structural basis for antibiotic selectivity, and revealed the mechanisms underlying their clinical action, thus paving the way for improved structure-based drug design.

PLACE: Biomedical Science Research Building Auditorium, 109 Zina Pitcher Place (Map: http://uuis.umich.edu/cic/map/central/index.cfm?region=D2)

SPONSOR: U-M Department of Biophysics

YonathDepartment of Biophysics