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In 2001, several research groups were able to get structures of a ribosome—a very complex nucleic acid structure and an enormous protein-RNA complex that is responsible for synthesizing proteins. Many scientists believed that getting an atomic-level image of a ribosome would be impossible because its structure is so complicated. (Ribosomes contain more than 50 proteins and thousands of RNA nucleotides.) Some scientists think these images—which were produced by Harry Noller at the University of California Santa Cruz, Venki Ramakrishnan at the University of Cambridge, England, and Thomas Steitz at Yale University—may be worthy of a Nobel Prize.
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