Venkatraman to deliver public lecture today

He will be delivering the centenary lecture on the topic ‘From Baroda to Cambridge: A Life in Science.’ Venkatraman said the talk will focus on various scientific influences on my career, starting from my basic education in India to the development of my interest in the ribosome, the molecule that translates genetic information into proteins.

I will also discuss various approaches used to tackle the structure and function of the ribosome, including the determination of their high resolution structures by x-ray crystallography.”

He has been a G N Ramachandran visiting professor at the IISc since 2006. He is currently the Joint Head of the Structural Studies Division at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK.

Nobel Prize

1n 2009, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Thomas A Steitz of Yale University and Ada E Yonath of Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.

The trio showed how the information encoded on strands of DNA is translated into the proteins of life.Venkatraman Ramakrishnan's new theory is hopeful for the whole world.
This structural biology will lead to new antibiotics to treat resistant strains of bacteria.