News

Knud Nierhaus passed away a few days ago. He is remembered as one of the most prolific ribosome specialists and connoisseurs well before the structure of the ribosome was solved. Numerous concepts and ingenious experiments are attached to his name, including the alpha-epsilon model which postulated an allosteric mechanism coupling A-site tRNA accommodation with E-site tRNA release, and the complete reconstitution of the 50S subunit from its constituents when he still worked with his mentor Wittmann in Berlin. Our paths crossed in the late nineties, when we decided to collaborate on the 3D imaging of well-characterized ribosome complexes with the then-new methods of single-particle cryo-EM. The first historic visualizations of EF-G and tRNAs bound to the ribosome were the results of these efforts. After forced retirement under the German civil service system, he joined his former student Christian Spahn (who as you know used to be a postdoc in this lab) as a postdoc and continued with his prolific research till the day he died on his birthday, from a heart attack. We remember him not just for his contributions to research on translation, but also his talents as a musician (piano) and his sophistication in the tradition of Western culture. Carol and I miss him as a friend. His untimely death came as a complete shock to us.