Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Two Americans and an Israeli won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on how the DNA code is translated into life, findings that have been used to fight infectious disease.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, 57, who heads the Structural Studies Division at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England; Thomas A. Steitz , 69, Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University in Connecticut, and Ada E. Yonath, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, will share the 10 million-krona ($1.4 million) award, the Nobel Assembly said at a press conference in Stockholm today.

Their work revealed what ribosomes, which produce proteins that control the chemistry in all living organisms, look like and how they function at the atomic level. The Laureates also created three-dimensional models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome, research that has been applied to develop new anti-infective medicines. Yonath is the first woman to win the chemistry accolade in 45 years.

“An understanding of the ribosome’s innermost workings is important for a scientific understanding of life,” the Nobel committee said in a statement. “These models are now used by scientists to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity’s suffering.”

Fundamental Biology

Ramakrishnan, reached at his office five minutes after being told of his achievement, said he was happy and surprised to be chosen. The three winners know each other well though they work separately, he said.

“It must have been a difficult decision; it’s been the subject of study by many groups over 40 years,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s fundamental biology.”

Steitz said he was in bed when his wife answered the call from Stockholm.

“My fondest hope is that they will use it to design a new antibiotic for tuberculosis, a major advance,” he said today at a press conference at Yale. “I hope that the prize is interpreted as how important Yale is in supporting research. The community here was absolutely pivotal in the development of the work.”

Yonath, who had an impoverished upbringing in Israel after her father died when she was 11, had spent the morning with her granddaughter when she received a call from the Nobel committee. “I always felt I was climbing Everest and solving a problem of the height of Everest and once beyond it I just found a higher Everest to climb,” she told Israel Radio in an interview.

Watson and Crick

“There was nothing in my childhood to suggest this would happen to me, although my parents and family always thought I had a chance at recognition.”

The scientists built on research by James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, who were awarded a Nobel Prize in 1962 for mapping the double-helix. Yonath achieved the “impossible” task of generating X-ray crystallographic structures of the ribosome, starting a race that Steitz and Ramakrishnan would join, the Nobel committee said.

Yonath used X-rays to generate three-dimensional crystals of ribosomes in bacteria living in harsh conditions such as the Dead Sea.

Antibiotics that target the ribosome include Zithromax, a medicine first approved in the U.S. in 1991, and Tetracyn, which is used to treat acne, though scientists didn’t fully understand how the medicines worked before Ramakrishnan, Steitz and Yonath’s discoveries, said Laura Howes, a spokeswoman at the Royal Society of Chemistry in London, in an interview.

Major League Baseball

Ramakrishnan, a U.S. citizen, was born in India in 1952. His parents were also scientists. He holds a doctorate in physics from Ohio University.

Steitz, also an American, was born in 1940 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has a doctorate in molecular biology and biochemistry from Harvard University and teaches molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale. His son Jon Steitz is a former pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team.

Yonath was born in 1939 in Jerusalem and holds a doctorate in X-ray crystallography from the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she now teaches and conducts research.

“The research behind these prizes shows how the transforming power of chemistry can improve peoples’ lives,” said Thomas H. Lane, president of the American Chemical Society, in an e-mailed statement.

Of the 153 previous winners of the chemistry prize, only three were women. Marie Curie was chosen in 1911; her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, shared the prize with her husband, Frederic Joliot, in 1935; and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin won in 1964.

Fluorescent Protein

Last year’s prize in chemistry went to Osamu Shimomura of Japan and Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien of the U.S. for research that has turned green fluorescent protein, a luminous substance first found in jellyfish, into one of the most important tools in bioscience. Their research enabled scientists to track proteins that regulate everything from hunger to sexual drive.

Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The Nobel Foundation was established in 1900 and the prizes were first handed out the following year.

The first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jacobus H. van’t Hoff for his work on rates of reaction, chemical equilibrium and osmotic pressure.

Physics Prize

Yesterday, Charles K. Kao of the Chinese University in Hong Kong, 75, and Willard S. Boyle, 85, and George E. Smith, 79, of Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on fiber optics and digital imaging.

On Oct. 5, Elizabeth Blackburn, 60, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco; Carol Greider, 48, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore; and Jack Szostak, 56, a professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, won the Nobel Prize in medicine for research on cell division and the “immortality enzyme” that can help them multiply without damage.

To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Andrea Gerlin at agerlin@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 7, 2009 13:07 EDT