Fifty to 100 times the size!
- Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics, ETH Zurich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland
- Corresponding author: allain{at}mol.biol.ethz.ch
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
In recollecting on discoveries in the RNA field over the last 20 years, one can find of course many, considering the phenomenal field we are all working in. But of course as a structural biologist, I remember vividly the day I saw for the first time a talk presenting the high resolution structure of the bacterial 50S ribosomal particle. If I do recollect well, the 10-minute talk was presented by Poul Nissen (from Tom Steitz's group in Yale) as the opening talk of the 2000 RNA Society meeting in Madison. I was just stunned and felt almost oppressed by what was shown in front of my eyes. The structure of this 1.5 megadalton protein–RNA complex containing 1500 nucleotides solved at 2.4 Å, was 16 times larger than the largest RNA solved to date (the P4-P6 group I intron from the Doudna lab) and more than 50 times larger than the …
