Professor Ada Yonath, the Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Professor of Structural Biology and the director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, has visited CityU and the Department of Biomedical Sciences (BMS) on 21 April 2015.

Professor Yonath is a world renowned researcher and a pioneer in the field of protein synthesis and structural biology. Since the 1970s, she has been studying the mechanisms of protein translation. She has focused on solving the crystal structure of the ribosome, which is the central machinery of protein translation in all organisms.

Ribosome is a very large complex composed of many proteins and RNAs so solving its structure was considered a formidable task. She finally achieved her goals in the early 2000s. From the crystal structures of ribosome that she and others have obtained, we now have a detailed understanding of the mechanism of protein synthesis on the molecular level. Her research has also provided important clues about the functions of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance.

Together with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz, Professor Yonath has won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009, for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.

During her visit, Professor Yonath met with a few BMS faculty members and discussed about the research projects. Professor Yonath was impressed by some research topics carried out at BMS and expressed interest in collaboration with researchers at BMS.

On the same day, Professor Yonath gave a City University Distinguished Lecture entitled “From Basic Science to Advanced Medicine”. In her talk, Professor Yonath outlined her vision on how to translate our understandings on the protein translation machinery into more effective medicines. Details about her lecture can be found at this link from CityU News Centre website.