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Yale Discovery Fights Disease
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Business New Haven
9/18/2000
By: BNH
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NEW HAVEN - Could the devastating bacterial diseases of the early 20th century, brought under control by antibiotics, re-emerge as the next health-care worry? The potential exists because over the years, many bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics.
Yet a recent landmark discovery by Yale researchers might help to keep those diseases at bay. They've determined the atomic structure of the ribosome's large subunit, paving the way for pharmaceutical companies to develop more effective drugs to fight infection. Ribosomes are cellular structures responsible for synthesizing protein molecules in all organisms. Many antibiotics cure disease by inhibiting the protein-synthesis activity, but there is worry that bacteria are learning how to survive the drugs. Thus, this new knowledge about ribosomes is crucial to developing new treatments. It also offers clues about evolution.
“This is like climbing Mt. Everest or running the four-minute mile,” says Thomas Steitz of the discovery made by a team in Yale laboratories, led by Steitz and Peter Moore. Steitz is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Moore is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry.
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