The evolving role of ribosomes in the regulation of protein synthesis

Maintenance of the cellular homeostasis is firmly linked with protein synthesis. Therefore, it is tightly controlled at multiple levels. An advancement in quantitative techniques, mainly over the last decade, shed new light on the regulation of protein production, which pointed the ribosome as a new player. Ribosomes are macromolecular machines that synthesize polypeptide chains using mRNA as a template. The enormous complexity of ribosomes provides many possibilities of changes in their composition and consecutively in their target specificity. However, it is not clear how this specialization is enforced by the cell and which stimuli provoke that diversity. This review presents an overview of currently available knowledge about ribosome heterogeneity, focusing on changes in protein composition, and their role in the control of translation specificity. Importantly, besides the potential advantage of ribosome-mediated regulation of protein synthesis, its failure can play a crucial role in disease development.