But in the year 2000, two major events changed everything. Those discoveries could result in a new generation of antibiotic drugs and effective treatments for asthma and a host of auto-immune diseases. This engine has a shaft, the shaft turns on a sort of universal joint, and coming off this joint are helical filaments that act as inner propellers. Recently completed atomic resolution structures of messenger RNA could lead to advances in treatment of asthma and auto-immune diseases.
Ribosomes are sites where many of the antibiotic drugs work.
These high resolution structures of ribosomes will give us better understanding of how these drugs work, and they'll probably give us the ability to design a whole new generation of these drugs.