This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly to Jacques Dubuche, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson, for developing Cryoelectron microscopy for the high resolution

structure determination of biomolecules in solution.

Juren Hanson, Secretary General of the Academy at 553 this morning, Eastern Time.

Duboche is honorary professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Frank is at Columbia University in New York.

Henderson is at the Laboratory of Molecular

Biology in Cambridge.

The technique has transformed the used to just see the shapes, the outer shapes of molecules

into one that is now used to see the details, the atoms inside the molecules.

Peter Brzinsky is a professor of biochemistry at Stockholm University and a member of

the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

And the latest technical developments occurred very recently.

So it's very recent developments that you can actually see the details of these molecules.

The technique is also relatively rapid. So one has samples that can be studied.

The structure can be determined relatively rapidly. And this was exemplified last year when the structure of the zeca virus

was determined just a few months.

And this structure shows the atomic details of the surface, which of course is important when developing drugs against the virus.

For an in-depth listen about the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry, look for the Scientific American Science

Talk Podcasts later today.

For Scientific Americans 60 Second Science, I'm Steve Mursky.