October 13, 2017 - In the early morning of Friday, the Nobel laureate Prof. Thomas Steitz visited iHuman, ShanghaiTech University, invited by Prof. Ming-Wei Wang, Dean of School of Pharmacy, Fudan University. Prof. Fei Xu of iHuman Institute hosted this visit.Thomas Steitz is a Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering studies of the structure and function of the ribosome. Steitz is also actively involved in some companies for development of antibiotics using the ribosome structure as a guide. Prof. Xu introduced the iHuman infrastructure, research highlight and vision to Steitz, who was glad to see the amazing progress that iHuman has made toward understanding the human cell signaling. Steitz also toured the laboratories, offices and talked with young students. When being asked “what is still unknown in the ribosome field”, he laughed, “Well, that is a good question. We have pretty much known everything about the bacterial ribosome structure. Yet, the eukaryotic ribosome research is still at its infancy.” He then commented that with the advancement of cryo-EM and imaging technology, more will be uncovered for the eukaryotic ribosome, which will largely benefit the research community and drug discovery.
Thomas Steitz with young students at iHuman