It may look like a plate of pasta from a pretentious restaurant, but this tangle of curly ribbons is an important cog in the machinery of life.

The Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory created this computer model of an E-coli ribosome as a way of testing new drugs. Ribosomes are structures within cells that decode DNA instructions on how to produce different proteins. Antibiotics typically work by throwing a monkey-wrench into an invading germ's ribosomes, disrupting the cell's life functions and killing it.

Until recently, drug manufacturers have had to take a "shot gun" approach to new drug design -- throwing different drugs at a cell and seeing what works. But a mapped out ribosome model in a computer can speed the process, allowing researchers to test many more drugs and their effects on the ribosome.

Creating this model of an E-coli's ribosome was no easy task for the Los Alamos computers, but it proves that these complex structures can be modeled and interpreted with current computers. And in these days of biological warfare threats from microorganisms such as anthrax, knowing thy enemy is more important than ever.

http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/news/releases/archive/02-110.shtml

-- Robert Myers