How do ribosomes synthesize proteins?

1 Answer
Jan 30, 2018

Ribosomes convert mRNA into protein

Explanation:

Ribosomes fulfil essentially the same function in most prokaryotic and Eukaryotic organism on Earth. However, sometimes the details can vary a little bit from organism to organism. Generally, though, the ribosome synthesizes proteins from an mRNA transcript that was produced by the cell during transcription. In the case of humans we produce mRNA in the nucleus of the cell, and send it to the cytoplasm for translation.

Where the ribosome binds and how it binds to the mRNA also differs from organism to organism however once it starts reading the mRNA the process is nearly identical. The ribosome binds and is able to read a series of three bases called a codon. In nature, there are 64 possible codons all coding for either an amino acid or "stop". The ribosome will move along the mRNA and read every codon and construct a chain of amino acids and attach amino acids to the growing end to form a protein chain.

The ribosome will then hit a stop codon that then tells it that the protein is finished. The ribosome then lets go of the mRNA which gets degraded and also lets go of the protein so it can fulfil its function.

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