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Updated: Jan 29, 2026

Chromatographic Purification of Highly Active Yeast Ribosomes
Published on: October 24, 2011
How a circularized tmRNA moves through the ribosome
Christopher D Rae1, Yuliya Gordiyenko1, V Ramakrishnan2
1Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Francis Crick Avenue, Cambridge, England, UK.
Abstract:
During trans-translation, transfer-messenger RNA (tmRNA) and small protein B (SmpB) together rescue ribosomes stalled on a truncated mRNA and tag the nascent polypeptide for degradation. We used cryo-electron microscopy to determine the structures of three key states of the tmRNA-SmpB-ribosome complex during trans translation at resolutions of 3.7 to 4.4 angstroms. The results show how tmRNA and SmpB act specifically on stalled ribosomes and how the circularized complex moves through the ribosome, enabling translation to switch from the old defective message to the reading frame on tmRNA.
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