after long effort, kornberg was able to use x-ray crystallography to take 3d pictures of rna molecules, lipids and proteins. with these studies, kornberg has created a picture of how dna works. the nobel prize committee said, "the truly revolutionary aspect of the picture kornberg has created is that it captures the process of transcription in full flow. what we see is an rna-strand being constructed, and hence the exact positions of the dna, polymerase and rna during this process".