During the past ten years, Shuya Fukai, an associate professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, has developed techniques to help other scientists better determine three-dimensional protein structures, particularly for protein–RNA complexes. He began this work as a graduate student at the University of Tokyo, working with Osamu Nureki. This work, followed by continuing collaboration, produced clear snapshots of a three-step chemical reaction (see page 419). According to Nureki, Fukai's expertise in crystallography, combined with his skills in biochemistry and molecular biology, made solving these structures possible.

Fukai plays down his role. “When someone meets a problem in crystallography, I give advice to help solve it, or, in more difficult cases, try to solve it myself,” he says. “In this paper, as first author Tomoyuki Numata is a good crystallographer, minimum advice was mostly sufficient.”

Nureki demurs, saying that Fukai was instrumental not just in resolving the initial structures, but also in validating them using electron density maps, improving on the initial picture quality. These efforts paid off. “The three crystals correspond to the three reaction stages,” Fukai says. “That's an unexpected success.”