The Protein Factory Protein synthesis is the major task performed by living cells. For instance, roughly one third of the molecules in a typical bacterial cell are dedicated to this central task.
Protein synthesis is a complex process involving many molecular machines.
This month, for the first time, you can also look at the factory of protein synthesis in atomic detail. The ribosome has been under the scrutiny of scientists for decades. Electron microscopy has yielded an increasingly detailed view over the years, defining the overall shape of individual ribosomes and differences in this shape for ribosomes from different species, More recently, detailed electron micrograph reconstructions have studied the interaction or ribosomes with messenger RNA, transfer RNA and the protein elongation factors. This legacy of morphological work lays the groundwork on which the atomic structures may be understood. Both subunits are composed of long strands of RNA, shown here in orange and yellow, dotted with protein chains, shown in blue.