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Updated: May 28, 2026

Polysome Fractionation and Analysis of Mammalian Translatomes on a Genome-wide Scale
Published on: May 17, 2014
The dynamics of supply and demand in mRNA translation
Chris A Brackley1, M Carmen Romano, Marco Thiel
1Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology, SUPA, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom. c.a.brackley@abdn.ac.uk
Abstract:
We study the elongation stage of mRNA translation in eukaryotes and find that, in contrast to the assumptions of previous models, both the supply and the demand for tRNA resources are important for determining elongation rates. We find that increasing the initiation rate of translation can lead to the depletion of some species of aa-tRNA, which in turn can lead to slow codons and queueing. Particularly striking "competition" effects are observed in simulations of multiple species of mRNA which are reliant on the same pool of tRNA resources. These simulations are based on a recent model of elongation which we use to study the translation of mRNA sequences from the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome. This model includes the dynamics of the use and recharging of amino acid tRNA complexes, and we show via Monte Carlo simulation that this has a dramatic effect on the protein production behaviour of the system.
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