Structural and functional studies revealed key mechanisms underlying elongation step of protein translation.

Ling Zhang, Yinghui Wang, Hong Dai, Jie Zhou

Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica 2020 Jul 10

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The ribosome is an ancient and universally conserved macromolecular machine that synthesizes proteins in all organisms. Since the discovery of the ribosome by electron microscopy in the mid-1950s, rapid progress has been made in research on it, regarding its architecture and functions. As a machine that synthesizes polypeptides, the sequential addition of amino acids to a growing polypeptide chain occurs during a phase called the elongation cycle. This is the core step of protein translation and is highly conserved between bacteria and eukarya. The elongation cycle involves codon recognition by aminoacyl tRNAs, catalysis of peptide bond formation, and the most complex operation of translation-translocation. In this review, we discuss the fundamental results from structural and functional studies over the past decades that have led to understanding of the three key questions underlying translation. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Citation

Ling Zhang, Yinghui Wang, Hong Dai, Jie Zhou. Structural and functional studies revealed key mechanisms underlying elongation step of protein translation. Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica. 2020 Jul 10;52(7):749-756