LIFE SCIENCES

BY SIMON SILVER
Department of Microbiology & Immunology
University of Illinois
Chicago, Ill.

" Obtaining diffraction-quality crystals of a membrane protein complex for the, first time ever and then obtaining a high-resolution, three-dimensional structure of this four-polypeptide complex by X-ray diffraction analysis was a major achievement in protein chemistry for 1958 Nobelists Deisenhofer and Michel. Their Nobel Prize lecture, like other science Nobel lectures, is published in Science.

I. Deisenhofer, H. Michel, "The photosynthetic reaction center from the purple bacterium Rhodopseudomonas virdis Science, 245, 1463-73, 29 September 1989. (University of Texas, Dallas; Maxplanck-Institut for Biophysics, Frankfurt, W.Ger.)

Articles in annual review publications are usually cited more frequently than experimental papers, because they provide helpful summaries of current understanding and are also useful for teaching purposes. A review of current understanding of "prions"—those strange nucleic acid-less infectious disease' agents that are encoded by chromosomal genes—is an excellent article...

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