Editor's Summary
3 April 2008
Found in translation
Recent advances in crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy have increased our current understanding of the ribosome's role in protein synthesis, the translation of the information encoded by messenger RNA code into a polypeptide. Now in a technical tour de force, Jin-Der Wen et al. have used optical tweezers to follow the translation of a single mRNA by an E. coli ribosome one codon at a time. An mRNA (yellow on the cover) is tracked as it is unwound and translated. Translation, it turns out, is not a continuous process but occurs through successive translocation-and-pause cycles. Each cycle consists of a translocation step of three nucleotides in less than 0.1 s, then a pause of a few seconds. These are the first direct real-time observations of the physical steps of the ribosome machine along the mRNA during translation. The resulting single-molecule assay can address problems in translation not accessible using traditional bulk methods, including translational gene regulation and the fidelity of translation. Graphic by Laura Lancaster and Courtney Hodges, using RIBBONS (M Carson, 1997).
Article: Following translation by single ribosomes one codon at a time
Jin-Der Wen, Laura Lancaster, Courtney Hodges, Ana-Carolina Zeri, Shige H. Yoshimura, Harry F. Noller, Carlos Bustamante & Ignacio Tinoco
doi:10.1038/nature06716
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (397K) | Supplementary information
