Secret revealed: The crystal structure of ribose
Thursday, July 8, 2010 - 04:49
in Physics & Chemistry
(PhysOrg.com) -- D-Ribose is just a small molecule - but an extremely important one for us life forms. It is astounding that the crystal structure of ribose is not included among the over 500,000 structures that have been solved. After all, ribose is a fundamental building block of ribosomes, the `protein factories` of cells. A Nobel Prize was awarded in 2009 for studies of the structure and function of ribosomes.