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Letter

Nature Chemical Biology 2, 254–258 (1 May 2006) | doi:10.1038/nchembio783

Functional epitopes at the ribosome subunit interface

Oliver Rackham , Kaihang Wang & Jason W Chin

The ribosome is a 2.5-MDa molecular machine that synthesizes cellular proteins encoded in mRNAs. The 30S and 50S subunits of the ribosome associate through structurally defined intersubunit bridges burying 6,000 |[Aring]|2, 80% of which is buried in conserved RNA-RNA interactions.