LAUSR

The central dogma of molecular biology describes the flow of information in a cell from DNA to RNA and onto proteins. Key to this flow of information, ribosomes act as the site of translation, taking in genetic information and producing polypeptides made of amino acids. Although they are complex macromolecular machines that consist of RNA and proteins, ribosomes are highly conserved across kingdoms of life, attesting to their evolutionary importance. Nenad Ban, a professor of structural molecular biology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, has been studying ribosomes for more than two decades. His work on the structure and function of the prokaryotic large ribosomal subunit contributed to the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was shared by structural biologists Ada Yonath, Venki Ramakrishnan, and Thomas Steitz. More recently, Ban’s team has leveraged innovative techniques, such as cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), to reveal the structures of eukaryotic, mitochondrial, and chloroplast ribosomes and their functional complexes to explain how the ribosomes assemble, function, and target proteins to specific cellular locations. Ban was elected as an international member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2021. PNAS spoke to him about his current research.