Opinion

A bike and a "little drinks party in the lab" is enough for the molecular biologist named joint winner of the prize in chemistry last week.

Congratulations! How did it feel when you found out?

Initially, I thought it was a prank. Then, as it dawned on me it wasn't, it was a bit of a shock. Nothing prepares you for it.

Did you paint Cambridge red?

Just a little drinks party in the lab.

Your laboratory has won quite a few Nobels over the years.

Over a dozen I think, and of course Francis Crick worked here, and he was a giant.

Crick shared a Nobel in 1962 for cracking the structure of DNA, and now you've been awarded one for showing how information in DNA is ultimately made into proteins by the ribosomes.

It's one of the central tenets of biology that DNA makes RNA makes protein. So I'm tremendously honoured to have received the prize for helping to explain how the ribosome works in the final step - reading the information contained in RNA and then producing proteins. The next stage of the problem is that as proteins emerge from the ribosome, they need to be sent to the right part of the cell and folded up properly. How the protein is trafficked - making sure it goes into the right cell compartment - is really important. And there has already been brilliant work done in these areas.

You shared your prize with Thomas Steitz of Yale University and Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Was anyone left out?

Many labs have made their contribution to understanding ribosomes. If the prize was for finding out the high-resolution structure, perhaps we three were at the forefront. You could argue that we really revolutionised the field by using X-ray crystallography to look at exactly how the atoms are configured inside a protein. But there are so many others who have made important contributions in other respects, such as showing how ribosomes are assembled.

Do you think the Nobel prizes reward too few people?

This rule of three is a little unfortunate, and not reflective of the way science is done today. Science is no longer carried out by small numbers of people; science is now a hugely collaborative enterprise. So these awards tend to make it too much like a sporting event, and that is a slightly unfortunate downside.

What is the upside?

It draws attention to scientific discoveries. But even then, after a couple of days no one on the street remembers what the prize was for, so there should be a more sustained effort to educate the public.

And of course there's the money. Previous winners have been known to buy motorbikes - do you have any plans on how you're going to spend it?

I don't own a car, only a bike, and I have a house that's plenty big enough, and that's enough for me. So no real plans yet.

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