Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 13, 2026

Toeprinting Analysis of Translation Initiation Complex Formation on Mammalian mRNAs
Published on: May 10, 2018
A genome-wide survey of alternative translational initiation events in Homo sapiens
Jing Zhang1, Jun Cai, YanDa Li
1Bioinformatics Division, TNLIST and Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
Alternative translational initiation is an important mechanism to increase the diversity of gene products. Although some of alternative translational initiation events have been reported, such information remains anecdotal and does not allow for any generalizations. The number of the known alternative translational initiation genes is so few that we know little about its mechanism. There is a great demand to discover more alternative translational initiation genes. However, it is arduously time-consuming to discover novel alternative translational initiation genes by the experimental method. Therefore we systematically analyzed protein sequences available in public database and predicted 1237 protein clusters as potential alternative translational initiation events. We concluded that about 8%-10% of human genes have alternative translational initiation sites. The results significantly increased the number of alternative translation initiation events and indicated that alternative translation initiation is an important and general regulation mechanism in the cellular process.
Related Concept Videos
Leaky Scanning
Initiation of Translation
First, the initiator tRNA must be selected from the pool of elongator tRNAs by eukaryotic initiation factor 2 (eIF2). The initiator tRNA (Met-tRNAi) has conserved sequence elements including modified bases at...
Initiation of Translation
First, the initiator tRNA must be selected from the pool of elongator tRNAs by eukaryotic initiation factor 2 (eIF2). The initiator tRNA (Met-tRNAi) has conserved sequence elements including modified bases at...
Ribosome Profiling
Applications of ribosome profiling
Ribosome profiling has many applications, including in vivo monitoring of translation inside a particular organ or tissue type and quantifying new protein synthesis levels.
The technique helps...
Transcription Initiation
The promoters and enhancers and their accessory proteins allow tight regulation of...
Translation in Prokaryotes

