The Israeli Nobel Laureate Ada Yonath performed important work on her structural biology research on the ribosome, the protein factory of living cells, at DESY's light sources. In her honour, an experiment hall at PETRA was named for her. Photo: DESY
The potential of synchrotron radiation for health research was noted very early on at DESY. Even in the late 1960s, the first researchers began their exeriments. Since 1975, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) maintains an outstation at DESY. EMBL operates three beamlines for structural biology at PETRA III.
Ada Yonath, the Israeli scientist, had led a Max Planck working group at DESY from 1984 to 2004. In her research, Yonath had involved herself particularly with ribosomes, the cellular protein factories, without which life would be impossible.
Then it was an exciting challenge to make the tiny ribosomes visible through X-ray crystallography. She decoded the ribosome's structure and for this, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside fellow scientists Thomas A. Steitz and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan.
It is amazing that we today know how ribosomes are constructed. That is highly important and useful knowledge, such as for the development of antibiotics against pathogenic bacteria.