On this day in 1999, Venki Ramakrishnan started his group at the LMB. On day 106 of #LMB365, Venki is pictured giving a lecture to his colleagues at LMB, in front of a schematic of the structure of ribosome. Venki helped to determine the structure and for this shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In his Nobel biography, From Chidambaram to Cambridge: A Life in Science, Venki commented, “So only a few months after my move to Cambridge, with the rest of my lab still in Utah, we had made a major breakthrough. When I revealed our findings at the triennial ribosome meeting in Denmark in June, I could sense the shock in the audience, especially since virtually none of them knew we were working on the problem. Soon afterwards, our work was published in Nature in August 1999 with much fanfare.”
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LMB 365 – Day 104
Day 104 of #LMB365 shows Greg Winter at the entrance to the LMB. Greg was born on this day in 1951. He studied for his PhD at the LMB and after postdoctoral research, returned here as a Programme Leader in 1981. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2018 for his work on phage display of peptides and antibodies
LMB 365 – Day 103
This image for day 103 of #LMB365 shows the denticles on the ventral side of a Drosophila embryo cuticle taken by differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy. The denticles form segmentally repeated belts in the embryo and can have different sizes, shape and orientation. The pattern results from the spatially organised activation of several signalling pathways during embryogenesis and this can serve as a physiological readout for changes in signalling pathways including planar polarity. Mariann Bienz’s group in the LMB’s PNAC Division is using this to study Wnt signalling components which are involved in the development of cancer.
LMB 365 – Day 102
The photo for day 102 of #LMB365 is of the new power distribution units (PDUs) in the server room. The PDUs are part of the significant electrical infrastructure required and can supply 200 kW of power to the new computing equipment. They are configured to provide redundancy should one system ever develop a fault the power can be taken from the stand-by feed.
LMB 365 – Day 101
On day 101 of #LMB365 a display of photographs in a meeting room charts the 10 former Heads of the Structural Studies Division: Max Perutz, John Kendrew, Hugh Huxley, Aaron Klug, Richard Henderson, Nigel Unwin, Tony Crowther, Kiyoshi Nagai, Venki Ramakrishnan and Jan Löwe. This impressive list includes 5 Nobel Laureates and 4 LMB Directors. Imagine having a meeting here with this eminent group looking down upon you.
LMB 365 – Day 100
Neurons (brain cells) communicate by passing electrical signals to each other across connections called synapses. By simulating the activity of individual synapses on a neuron, seen as deflections in this image for day 100 of #LMB365, Jake Watson in Ingo Greger’s group in Neurobiology can investigate the properties of information transfer between neurons.