From differential transcription of ribosomal proteins to differential structure of ribosomes
Department of Bioengineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biochemistry, Bioengineering, Cell Biology, Genomics
- Keywords
- gene regulation, ribosomes, protein synthesis, specialized, growth rate, ribosomal proteins, proteomics, cell growth, metabolism
- Copyright
- © 2015 Slavov
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. From differential transcription of ribosomal proteins to differential structure of ribosomes. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1504v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1504v1
Abstract
About a decade ago, I observed that as the cell growth rate increases, mRNAs coding for ribosomal proteins are transcriptionally induced to varying degrees. This observation puzzled me as it defied my expectation that faster growing cells meet their demands for increased protein synthesis by simply inducing all ribosomal proteins to the same degree to make more ribosomes. These initial data were limited to mRNA levels and thus too indirect to make concrete conclusions about ribosomal structure and function. This commentary outlines my trajectory investigating this puzzle in search of more direct data.
Author Comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ.