Gene Machine by Venki Ramakrishnan

A Nobel Prize–winning biologist’s “engaging and witty” (Forbes) memoir tells the riveting story of his race to discover the inner workings of biology’s most important molecule

Everyone has heard of DNA. But by itself, DNA is just an inert blueprint for life. It is the ribosome—an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms—that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us. Gene Machine is an insider account of the race for the ribosome’s structure, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases. But this is also a human story of Ramakrishnan’s unlikely journey, from his first fumbling lab experiments to his fierce competition with some of the world’s best scientists.

Gene Machine is a frank insider’s account of the pursuit of high-stakes science.

Venki Ramakrishnan shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for uncovering the structure of the ribosome. He is a senior scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and was the president of the Royal Society in London from 2015-2020.