Click to play videoIndian-origin scientist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan shares the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009 with Thomas A Steitz and Ada E Yonath, it was announced in Stockholm on Wednesday. Professor of Microbiology and Cell Biology at Indian Institute of Science from Bangalore, Umesh Varshney speaks about Dr Ramakrishnan's win.
CNN-IBN: What is your reaction to this Nobel being given to Dr Ramakrishnan?
Professor Umesh Varshney: It's very exciting. We have been hoping for it for some time now and it has finally happened.
CNN-IBN: For a layman, what was specifically done by Dr Ramakrishnan, which makes it so remarkable and deserving of a Nobel?
Professor Umesh Varshney: He's been working on ribosomes which are molecular machines which make proteins for a lot of anti-biotics. What he has done is resolved the structure of ribosome at the atomic level, which allows us to understand how they function.
Ribosomes have been known for a long time and people have been doing a lot of classical genetic work with it. And though these have been telling us how proteins are made, the real mechanism hasn't come out. It's thanks to the work of Dr Ramakrishnan and other people who have been working on it that now we can understand the mechanism.
I'm particularly impressed with his work as he not only does structure work but also combines lot of the genetics and bio-chemistry with this work which makes it more interesting.
CNN-IBN: Dr Ramakrishnan is the third Indian-American to have won that prize for science after Independence. However, at the Cambridge lab he is the 13th man to have won the Nobel prize. Why is it not possible to replicate some of that success for Indian scientists in India?
Professor Umesh Varshney: These things require the kind of facilities which are only now becoming available to us in India. But I'm sure if spoken to Dr Ramakrishnan, he would praise the teachers he had here and it is with that basic knowledge he has been able to achieve what he has achieved.
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