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Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan,   (born 1952) is an

Indian-born American and British  structural biologist.

In 2009 he shared the  Nobel Prize in Chemistry   with

Thomas A. Steitz  and Ada Yonath, “for studies of the

structure and function of the  ribosome".[3][6][7][8][9][10]

As of 2015 he works at the   Medical Research Coun-

cil (MRC)  Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in

Cambridge, UK.[11] On November 30th 2015, Ramakr-

ishnan will take up the post of  President of the Royal

Society   succeeding his predecessor in the role,   Paul

Nurse.[12]

1 Education and early life

Ramakrishnan was born in  Chidambaram in   Cuddalore

district   of   Tamil Nadu, India[13] to C. V. Ramakrish-

nan and  Ramakrishnan Rajalakshmi.[1] Both his parents

were scientists, and his father was head of department

of biochemistry at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of

Baroda.[1][14][15] At the time of his birth, Ramakrishnan’s

father was away from India doing  postdoctoral research

with   David E. Green   at the   University of Wisconsin–Madison.[1] His mother obtained a PhD in Psychology

from McGill University in 1959[16] which she completed

in only 18 months, and was mentored by   Donald O.

Hebb.[1] Ramakrishnan moved to  Vadodara (previously

also known as Baroda) in  Gujarat   at the age of three,

where he had his schooling at Convent of Jesus and Mary,

except for spending 1960–61 in Adelaide, Australia. Fol-

lowing his Pre-Science at the  Maharaja Sayajirao Uni-

versity of Baroda, he did his undergraduate studies in the

same university on a National Science Talent Scholarship,

graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics

in 1971.

[8]

At the time, the physics course at Baroda wasnew, and based in part on the The Feynman Lectures on

Physics.[1]

In a lecture in January 2010 at the Indian Institute of Sci-

ence, he revealed that he failed to get admitted to any of

the Indian Institutes of Technology or the Christian Med-

ical College, Vellore, Tamil Nadu.[17]

Immediately after graduation he moved to the U.S.A.,

where he obtained his PhD degree in Physics from Ohio

University   in 1976 for research into the  ferroelectric

phase transition   of   Potassium Dihydrogen Phosphate

(KDP)[18] supervised by Tomoyasu Tanaka.[4][19][20] He

then spent two years studying biology as a gradu-ate student at the  University of California, San Diego

while making a transition from theoretical physics to

biology.[21]

2 Career

Ramakrishnan began work on ribosomes as a postdoc-

toral fellow with Peter Moore at Yale University.[8] After

his  post-doctoral fellowship, he initially could not find a

faculty position even though he had applied to about 50

universities in the U.S.[17]

He continued to work on ribosomes from 1983-95 as a

staff scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory.[2] In

1995 he moved to the University of Utah as a Professor

of Biochemistry, and in 1999, he moved to his current

position at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of

Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, where he had

also been a sabbatical visitor during 1991-92.

In 2005, Ramakrishnan’s laboratory published a 5.5

Angstrom   resolution structure of the 30S  subunit. The

following year, his laboratory determined the complete

molecular structure of the 30S subunit of the ribosome

and its complexes with several  antibiotics. This was fol-lowed by studies that provided structural insights into the

mechanism that ensures the fidelity of protein biosynthe-

sis. More recently in 2007 his laboratory has determined

the atomic structure of the whole ribosome in complex

with its tRNA and mRNA ligands. Ramakrishnan is also

known for his past work on histone and chromatin struc-

ture.

As of 2015 his most cited papers (according to

Scopus[22]) have been published in   Nature,[23][24][25]

Science,[26][27] and Cell .[28][29][30]

3 Awards and honours

Ramakrishnan was elected a Member of the European

Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2002[31] and

a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2003. He was

elected a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sci-

ences in 2004. In 2007, Ramakrishnan was awarded the

Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine and the Datta Lecture-

ship and Medal of the Federation of European Biochemi-

cal Societies (FEBS). In 2008, he won the Heatley Medal

of the British Biochemical Society. Since 2008, he is a

Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and a foreign Fel-low of the Indian National Science Academy. In 2009,

Ramakrishnan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

1

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2   5 REFERENCES 

along with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath.[32] He re-

ceived India’s second highest civilian honor, the Padma

Vibhushan, in 2010.[33] Ramakrishnan was  knighted  in

the  2012 New Year Honours   for services to  Molecular

Biology,[34] but does not generally use the title 'Sir'. In

the same year, he was awarded the Sir Hans Krebs Medal

by the FEBS. In 2013, he won the Spanish Jiménez-DiázPrize. Ramakrishnan was included as one of  25 Greatest

Global Living Indians  by NDTV Channel, India on 14

December 2013. His certificate of election to the Royal

Society reads:

4 Personal life

Ramakrishnan married Vera Rosenberry in 1975,[1] an

author and illustrator of children’s books. His stepdaugh-

ter Tanya Kapka is a doctor in Oregon, and his son Raman

Ramakrishnan is a cellist based in New York.[35]

5 References

[1]   “Venkatraman Ramakrishnan - Biography: From Chi-

dambaram to Cambridge: A Life in Science”. Stockholm:

nobelprize.org. Archived from the original  on 2015-04-

18.

[2] Cerf, Corinne; Lippens, Guy; Muyldermans, Serge;

Segers, Alain; Ramakrishnan, V.; Wodak, Shoshana

J.; Hallenga, Klaas; Wyns, Lode (1993).   “Homo-

and heteronuclear two-dimensional NMR”.  Biochemistry(American Chemical Society)   32   (42): 11345–11351.

doi:10.1021/bi00093a011. Retrieved 2015-06-17.

[3]   RAMAKRISHNAN, Sir Venkatraman.   Who’s Who  2015

(online Oxford University Press  ed.). A & C Black, an

imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. (subscription re-

quired)

[4] Ramakrishnan, Venkatraman; Tanaka, Tomoyasu (1977).

“Green’s-function theory of the ferroelectric phase transi-

tion in potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP)".  Physical 

Review B  (American Physical Society) 16  (1): 422–426.

doi:10.1103/physrevb.16.422. Retrieved 2015-06-17.

[5]   “Venkatraman Ramakrishnan: Certificate of Election

EC/2003/31”. London: The Royal Society. 2003.

Archived from the original on 2015-06-18.

[6]   “2009 Chemistry Nobel Laureates”. Nobel Foundation.

2009. Retrieved 2009-10-14.

[7] Rodnina, Marina V.; Wintermeyer, Wolfgang

(2010).   “The ribosome goes Nobel”.   Trends in

Biochemical Sciences    (Elsevier BV)   35   (1): 1–5.

doi:10.1016/j.tibs.2009.11.003. Retrieved 2015-06-17.

[8]   “Venkatraman_Ramakrishnan”. University of Cam-

bridge. Archived from the original on 2015-04-19.

[9]  Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Officeof Scientific and Technical Information, United States De-

partment of Energy

[10]   Venkatraman Ramakrishnan Audio Interview   Official

Nobel Foundation website telephone interview

[11] Nair, Prashant (2011). “Profile of Venkatraman Ramakr-

ishnan”.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

108  (38): 15676–15678. doi:10.1073/pnas.1113044108.

PMC 3179092.  PMID 21914843.

[12] Peplow, M. (2015). “Structural biologist named

president of UK Royal Society”.   Nature.

doi:10.1038/nature.2015.17153.

[13]   “Common root: Tamil Nadu gets its third laureate”.

Times of India. TNN. 8 October 2009.

[14]   http://www.asianwindow.com/tag/

venkatraman-venki-ramakrishnan/

[15] Ramakrishnan, C. V.; Banerjee, B. N. (1951). “Mould

Lipase: Effect of Addition of Vitamins and Sterol to

the Cake Medium on the Growth and the Activity of

the Lipolytic Mould”.   Nature   168   (4282): 917–918.doi:10.1038/168917a0.

[16] Ramakrishnan, Rajalakshmi (1959).  Comparative Effects 

of Successive and Simultaneous Presentation on Transfer 

in Verbal Learning (PhD thesis). McGill University.

[17]   “Nobel laureate Venkat Ramakrishnan failed IIT, medical

entrance tests”.  The Times Of India. 2010-01-05.

[18] Ramakrishnan, Venkatraman (1976).  The Green function

theory of the ferroelectric phase transition in KDP   (PhD

thesis). Ohio University. OCLC 3079828.

[19]   “Venkatraman Ramakrishnan: A profile”. Times of India.2009-10-07. Retrieved 2009-10-07.

[20]  “FACTBOX: Nobel chemistry prize – Who are the win-

ners?". Reuters. 2009-10-07. Retrieved 2009-10-07.

[21]   “Profile: Dr Venkatraman Ramakrishnan”.   Indian Ex-

press. 7 October 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-07.

[22]   Venkatraman Ramakrishnan’s publications indexed by the

Scopus   bibliographic database, a service provided by

Elsevier.

[23] Ramakrishnan, V.; Wimberly, Brian T.; Brodersen, Ditlev

E.; Clemons, William M.; Morgan-Warren, Robert J.;

Carter, Andrew P.; Vonrhein, Clemens; Hartsch, Thomas(2000). “Structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit”.  Nature

407   (6802): 327–339.   doi:10.1038/35030006.   PMID

11014182.

[24] Ramakrishnan, V.; Carter, Andrew P.; Clemons, William

M.; Brodersen, Ditlev E.; Morgan-Warren, Robert J.;

Wimberly, Brian T. (2000). “Functional insights from

the structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit and its inter-

actions with antibiotics”.   Nature  407   (6802): 340–348.

doi:10.1038/35030019. PMID 11014183.

[25] Ramakrishnan, V.; Finch, J. T.; Graziano, V.; Lee,

P. L.; Sweet, R. M. (1993). “Crystal structure of

globular domain of histone H5 and its implications fornucleosome binding”.   Nature   362   (6417): 219–223.

doi:10.1038/362219a0. PMID 8384699.

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3

[26] Ogle, J. M.; Brodersen, DE; Clemons, WM Jr; Tarry,

MJ; Carter, AP; Ramakrishnan, V (2001). “Recogni-

tion of Cognate Transfer RNA by the 30S Ribosomal

Subunit”.   Science   (New York)   292   (5518): 897–902.

doi:10.1126/science.1060612. PMID 11340196.

[27]   PMID 16959973 (PubMed)

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[28] Brodersen, Ditlev E.; Clemons, William M.; Carter, An-

drew P.; Morgan-Warren, Robert J.; Wimberly, Brian T.;

Ramakrishnan, V. (2000). “The Structural Basis for the

Action of the Antibiotics Tetracycline, Pactamycin, and

Hygromycin B on the 30S Ribosomal Subunit”.   Cell  103

(7): 1143–1154.   doi:10.1016/s0092-8674(00)00216-6.

PMID 11163189.

[29] Ramakrishnan, V. (2002). “Ribosome Structure and the

Mechanism of Translation”.   Cell   108   (4): 557–572.

doi:10.1016/s0092-8674(02)00619-0.  PMID 11909526.

[30] Ogle, James M.; Murphy, Frank V.; Tarry, Michael J.;

Ramakrishnan, V. (2002). “Selection of tRNA by the Ri-

bosome Requires a Transition from an Open to a Closed

Form”.   Cell   111   (5): 721–732.   doi:10.1016/s0092-

8674(02)01086-3.  PMID 12464183.

[31]   “The EMBO Pocket Directory” (PDF). European Molec-

ular Biology Organization. Archived from the original on

2015-03-16.

[32]  “All Nobel Laureates in Chemistry”. Nobel Foundation.

Retrieved 2009-10-07.

[33]  “This Year’s Padma Awards announced”  (Press release).Ministry of Home Affairs. 25 January 2010. Retrieved

25 January 2010.

[34]   The London Gazette:   (Supplement) no. 60009. p. 1. 31

December 2011.

[35] Amit Roy (17 Oct 2009).   "‘Venki’ makes light of India

link – Winner says not to treat science like cricket; league

of misses grows”.   The Telegraph (Kolkata). Retrieved

2009-10-17.

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4   6 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES 

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