Nobel chemistry prize

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- Two U.S. scientists and one Israeli have been selected to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on the building blocks of proteins.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a U.S.-born researcher who works at a U.K. laboratory; Thomas Steitz, a professor at Yale; and Ada Yonath, who is affiliated with the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, will share the 2009 prize equally.

A Nobel Prize committee said the scientists' work in devising 3-D models that show how antibiotics bind to ribosome, which makes proteins, and led to the development of "new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering."

This year the Nobel prizes, in addition to a certificate and medal, carry an award of $1.4 million. The medicine and physics prizes will be given to U.S. researchers. The literature prize is set for a Thursday announcement with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate to be revealed Friday. The economics prize announcement is Monday.

The awards are formally presented Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death.