Ribosomes in Biological News

Bacteria are models of efficiency

... two components of the protein production process: ribosomes the machinery in which proteins are produced ... equation assesses the production rate of the ribosomes themselves; the second the protein output of the ... deal with how the cell assigns the available ribosomes and polymerases to the various tasks of creating ...

Cellular discovery may lead to targeted treatment for rare form of anemia

... of ribosomal protein L11 from the nucleolus, the part of the nucleus where ribosomes are produced to the nucleoplasm. The UC research, however, suggests ... disrupted. Our study actually showed that the nucleolus stayed intact as ribosomes were still being produced, suggesting selective upregulation of L11," ...

Researchers solve piece of large-scale gene silencing mystery

... highly redundant, cells use nucleolar dominance to control the dosage of ribosomes in an organism. According to Pikaard, if researchers could harness the ... would not be a viable therapeutic approach for cancer patients because ribosomes are necessary for survival. But Pikaard and his collaborators' research ...

Researchers uncover details about how dietary restriction slows down aging

... the cell's protein factory, sometimes led to increased life span. ribosomes are made up of two parts -- the large and small subunits -- and the ... interesting to the UW team was its unique mode of regulation. "When ribosomes arent working at 100 percent capacity, most proteins are made less ...

Scripps Research scientists observe human neurodegenerative disorder in fruit flies

... genetic sequence and then translating it into a string of amino acids. That's where the tRNA synthetases are needed. When building new proteins, ribosomes rely on a set of molecules called transfer RNAs (tRNAs) to supply them with the amino acids they need to construct the proteins. The tRNA synthetases ...

Genetic switch potential key to new class of antibiotics

... instructions stored in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) chains are copied into messenger ribonucleic acids (mRNAs). The mRNAs are then transported to ribosomes that pair them with transfer RNAs that contribute amino acids into a protein chain, thereby decoding the gene. In recent years, groundbreaking work ...

American Chemical Society Weekly PressPac -- April 8, 2009

... the presence of active ricin in any sample by measuring the release of adenine from specific ricin substrates. Ricin-catalyzed adenine release from ribosomes stops protein synthesis and is the mechanism of action of this deadly toxin. By coupling adenine release to light formation by firefly luciferase, ...

Genetic sleuth solves glaucoma mystery

... these findings explain the mechanics of glaucoma, how changes in these two genes lead to the illness. "Glaucoma happens when WDR36 isn't producing ribosomes properly and STI1 isn't packaging those proteins properly you need at least these two mutations to cause the disease." Walter says this DNA ...

Life secret exposed: Scientists unlock mystery of molecular machine

... goes further than Darwin and the many evolutionary biologists who followed could have imagined By the standards of biological molecules, ribosomes are immense. Though visible only through lenses of the most powerful microscopes, comparing most other biological molecules to this behemoth is like ...

Unusual microbial ropes grow slowly in cave lake

... dyes, one for DNA, one for bacteria and one for archaea, show very little activity in the bacteria or archaea, probably because the dyes highlight ribosomes and they only exist in a cell when it is actively metabolizing. The researchers, who include Macalady; Daniel S. Jones and Rebecca R. McCauley, ...

Biomedical engineers' detective work reveals antibiotic mechanism

... targets for antibiotic drugs. Historically, drugs have aimed their destructive powers at important cellular functions in the bacteria -- such as the ribosomes that translate genetic information. In revealing this new array of peripheral players in the bacteria's function, the Collins team has uncovered new ...

Study shows more genes are controlled by biological clocks

... and varied signaling processes," said Arnold. "But perhaps the most important role we've seen so far is the clock's role in ribosome biogenesis." ribosomes assemble individual amino acids into polypeptide chains by binding a messenger RNA and then using this as a template to connect the correct sequence ...

Researchers discover critical detail of cellular defense against genetic mistakes

... by chains of ribonucleic acid chains (RNA), which are modified copies of DNA. Messenger RNA (mRNA) is transported to cellular factories called ribosomes that receive instructions for building proteins by reading mRNA templates, a process called translation. Remarkably, about 75 percent of human genes ...

Proteins pack tighter in crowded native state

... HOUSTON -- Nov. 12, 2007 -- The syrupy soup of proteins, ribosomes and membranes inside a living cell is so tightly packed it may increase the structural content of proteins by as much as 25 percent, according to new ...

North & South American researchers find architectural abnormalities in T. cruzi ribosome

... however, no atomic-resolution image of eukaryotic ribosomes exists, and all images produced so far have been ... imaging and reconstruction methods. The ribosomes of different eukaryotic organisms have only ... within host organisms. "In reconstructions of ribosomes from yeast to rabbits to humans, one essentially ...

Danish researches solve virus puzzle

... to be produced to fulfill the needs of the living cell. The task of the ribosomes is to read the code of the host cell, but the virus has the special trick that its RNA resembles that of the host cell, and hence, the ribosomes of the host cell will start reading the viral RNA and produce the proteins ...

Study provides insight into cellular defenses against genetic mutation

... a modified copy of DNA, is transported to cellular factories called ribosomes that receive instructions for building proteins by "reading" mRNA ... pioneer translation initiation complex, which enables mRNAs to be read by ribosomes during quality control review. Previous studies in the Maquat lab revealed ...

Newly identified mechanism for silencing genes points to possible anti-cancer strategies

... extended those studies to find that RISC also interacts with another complex that includes molecules required to build functional ribosomes. ribosomes are cellular organelles responsible for translating messenger RNA into protein. Closer investigation showed that the new complex also included a ...

Regulating the nuclear architecture of the cell

... in the heterochromatin where ribosomal DNA -- consisting of large genes, repeated 300 to 400 times -- codes for the production of the RNA from which ribosomes are built. "This work on pathways that control the organization of the nucleolus is the first to be published that deals with an organelle," ...

Biologists probe the machinery of cellular protein factories

... us the whole process of the ribosome in action." The ribosome is a complex molecular machine made up of proteins and RNA molecules. The bacterial ribosomes studied in Noller's lab (obtained from the bacterium Thermus thermophilus) are made up of three different RNA molecules and more than 50 different ...

Molecule by molecule, new assay shows real-time gene activity

... journal Science, researchers led by Harvard's X. Sunney Xie counted, one by one, protein molecules generated in small bursts within cells as multiple ribosomes bound to single copies of mRNA complete the process by which DNA, an organism's long-term genetic repository, yields its crop of proteins. These ...

Tool developed to silence genes in specific tissues using RNAi

... as a double strand. The organism's own RNA, however, leaves the nucleus of cells (where it was produced by DNA) as a single strand, to be decoded by ribosomes into the proteins that perform all the work of the cell. RNAi, therefore, recognizes the double strand of viral RNA as different, and sets in motion ...

Study findings offer potential new targets for antibiotics

... map showing where these mutations were positioned on the ribosomes. Interestingly, the map indicated that there were four additional places on ribosomes where these mutations clustered. While researchers already knew that these sites existed, they did not know that these areas could possibly become ...

Evolution of life on Earth may hold key to finding life in outer space

... to see how simple RNAs might have given rise to this machinery. This information would help us to better understand how life evolved on Earth and how ribosomes actually work, which remains a fundamental problem in biochemistry." One of only a small number of groups in the nation working on the history and ...

Researchers make gains in understanding antibiotic resistance

... group used ribosomal subunits from the primitive archaebacterium Haloarcula marismortui (Hma), which is found in the Dead Sea. They chose Hma ribosomes for their studies because they crystallize well enough to yield high-resolution structural data, but these ribosomes, like those from eukaryotes, are ...