Brilliant 10: Molecular Filmmaker
Capturing the motion of macromolecules will help researchers make better HIV drugs Early every morning, before dawn if he can, Hashim Al-Hashimi goes running. Six miles, rain or shine, summer heat or bitter Michigan cold (Al-Hashimi works at the University of Michigan). His chosen route is hilly for a reason. Just at the uphill crests-when the muscle pain is sharpest and the body most wants to quit-that's when his mind is sharpest. "Most of my thinking is at the top of a hill," he says. It was one such push that led to his biggest innovation in molecular visualization. Using a computer algorithm he developed and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, Al-Hashimi recorded the atomic-scale contortions of RNA and DNA, long thought of in biology as relatively inflexible structures. Instead of holding one predominant form, Al-Hashimi found, RNA bends and wiggles into a predictable series of shapes as its atoms rotate around...