Miri Krupkin is a biologist and PhD student at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Her thesis “Towards the Determination of the Structure of Mycobacterium Smegmatis Ribosome and Studies on the Properties of the Prebiotic Ribosome” is being written under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Prof. Ada Yonath.

Miri has conducted research in the fields of material engineering, cell biology, molecular computing and structural biology. In her PhD research, she studies the structure and function of the ribosome, in particular the pathogenic  ycobacterium berculosis ribosome. This research is done using crystallography, which enables studying the structure and  function of the ribosome at the molecular level. This should provide information that can be useful for to the improvement of existing antibiotics and the design of new and effective drugs.

In parallel, Miri is studying the evolution of the ribosome. She believes that there is a prebiotic fossil trapped in the contemporary ribosome. This proto-ribosome is the link between the RNA world and the contemporary protein catalysis dominated world. Miri is involved in the design, in-vitro transcription and characterization of the RNA proto-ribosome. She expects that constructing and characterizing the proto-ribosome will lead to novel insights regarding the origin of life as we know it.