This year’s prestigious prize in medicine “Ernst Jung”, worth 300.000 euros share Croatian professional biologist Nenad Ban and neuroscientist Tobias Moser from Göttingen.
Nenad Ban is a professor at the Institute for molecular biology and biophysics at ETH in Zürich since 2000. He was born in Zagreb in 1966. and specialized in the field of molecular biology and biochemistry. He is a corresponding member of HAZU. Since 1995. he has been working at Yale University with Thomas Steitz where study structure of large ribosomal subunits revealed in 2000. He is the first scientist who described the atomic structure of ribosomes in the cells of higher organisms. Ban together with his team decoded the structure of ribosomes in the mitochondria of mammalian cells. Mitochondria are considered to be power stations because they are specific structure that supply the energy inside cells. Poorly functioning of the ribosomes can cause problems such as cancer or metabolic disorders.
His satisfaction with award, scientist did not hide, but pointed out that the whole team of associates is credited for that. It is less known that Nenad Ban comes from a family of scientists, because as a child liked to experiment and study marine organisms.
