Abstract
These are heady days for scientists who study ribosomes. In the past few weeks, three teams of X-ray crystallographers have published substantially better views of the structure of the ribosome from bacteria and of each of its two subunits. In addition, there are strong indications that even better views are on the way. Ribosomes are massive and complex cellular machines that synthesize proteins based on information provided in the cell's DNA. Because they are so fundamental to life, understanding how they work is at the heart of a molecular understanding of biology. More practically, the bacterial ribosome is the target of the lion's share of current antibiotics, so a detailed map of this complex is likely to provide many new targets for development of antibiotics. With a total molecular weight of about 2.5 million and a structure that includes in the two subunits three separate pieces of RNA and 55 different proteins, the new ribosome ...
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