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CARLOS FERNÁNDEZ TORNERO AN. R. ACAD. NAC. FARM.

ABSTRACT

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009: atomic structure of the
cellular machinery for protein synthesis

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology,
United Kingdom), Thomas Steitz (Yale University, United States)
and Ada Yonath (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel) for their
studies in the structure and function of the ribosome, a macro-
molecular machine that carries out protein synthesis within the cell.
The scientists, in an incredible tour de force that took over twenty
years, applied X-ray crystallography in order to determine the atomic
structure of this large macromolecular complex, alone and in
association with the major components in the protein synthesis
process. The resulting models have been essential to understand the
mechanisms underlying this process, in particular how the ribosome
is able to decode messenger RNA (which carries the genetic
information stored in DNA), how peptide bond catalysis proceeds,
and the way in which several antibiotics protect us from bacterial
infections.

Keywords: Ribosome; Translation; Protein synthesis; X-ray
crystallography; Antibiotics.

1. INTRODUCCIÓN

El ribosoma es sin duda uno de los complejos macromoleculares
más importantes de la célula. Junto con la ARN polimerasa, otra
máquina macromolecular esencial para la vida, lleva a cabo el paso
de la información genética contenida en el ADN hasta las proteínas,
que son las encargadas de realizar las diferentes funciones celulares.
Este proceso de transferencia de información que, dada su relevan-
cia, es conocido como Dogma Central de la Biología Molecular (1),
ocurre en dos etapas. En la primera, la ARN polimerasa transcribe
el mensaje genético contenido en la doble cadena de ADN a una
molécula similar pero de cadena sencilla denominada ARN mensa-
jero (ARNm). Durante la segunda, el ribosoma traduce la informa-

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