NOBEL LAUREATES

Avram Hershko

Born: 31 December 1937, Karcag, Hungary

Affiliation at the time of the award: Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

Prize motivation: "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation"

Field: biochemistry

Prize share: 1/3

Work
An important process in our cells is the production of proteins. But proteins must also be broken down. At the beginning of the 1980s, Avram Hershko, Aaron Ciechanover and Irwin Rose showed that one protein, ubiquitin, has a special mission in this context. When it is time for a protein to be broken down, a ubiquitin molecule attaches itself to the protein. The ubiquitin molecule serves as a key that enters a proteasome, a protein complex that divides the protein into smaller pieces. These can be used in the construction of other substances in the cell. Read more

Ada E. Yonath

Born: 22 June 1939, Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel)

Affiliation at the time of the award: Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

Prize motivation: "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome"

Field: biochemistry, structural chemistry

Prize share: 1/3

Life
Ada Yonath was born in Jerusalem, Israel. Her parents had emigrated from Poland. Although her father was a rabbi, her family tried to make a living by running a grocery store. After her father's death, Ada Yonath's family moved to Tel Aviv. After studying chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she earned her PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science, to which she has maintained her ties as a researcher. Alongside her work there, Ada Yonath has also worked for several European and US universities. She has one daughter.

Work
An organism's vital functions are managed by large, complex protein molecules produced in cells' ribosomes. There, genetic information from "messenger RNA" is translated into chains of amino acids that then build proteins. In the 1970s, Ada Yonath began a project that culminated in 2000 in her successful mapping (together with other researchers) of the structure of ribosomes, which consist of hundreds of thousands of atoms, using x-ray crystallography. Among other applications, this has been important in the production of antibiotics. Read more