Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this year was awarded to three scientists for their work on cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM):

• Jacques Dubochet, Swiss, received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Geneva in 1973. He currently holds emeritus positions at the University of Lausanne and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).
• Joachim Frank, German-American, earned his Ph.D. in Biophysics from Columbia University in 1976. He remains Director Emeritus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Campus and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University.
• Richard Henderson, British, obtained his Ph.D. in Biophysics from Cambridge University in 1967. He continues to serve as Emeritus Fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

These three laureates were jointly recognized for their development of cryo-EM, a groundbreaking technique that revolutionized the field of structural biology. Cryo-EM allows scientists to visualize biological molecules in their near-native states, providing unprecedented insights into their structure and function.

• Dubochet developed a crucial method for vitrifying biological samples, rapidly freezing them in liquid ethane to create amorphous ice, preserving their natural conformation for imaging.
• Frank played a central role in developing image processing algorithms to reconstruct high-resolution 3D structures from noisy cryo-EM images.
• Henderson contributed significantly to improving the resolution and applicability of cryo-EM by designing specialized microscopes and optimizing imaging protocols.

Their collective work on cryo-EM has had a transformative impact on various areas of biology, medicine, and drug discovery. It continues to pave the way for further advancements in understanding the molecular basis of life and developing new therapies for various diseases.