What composes a ribosome?

[Freeman]

What are the elements and molocules in a Ribosome? I've looked all over the web and can't find it! Aggh!

[Freeman]

I think this is it, does anyone know?

 

[Skye]

Try to link to images that big.

 

That is, by the file name, a 2d representation of the 23S rRNA subunit of the E. coli ribosome. S is a mass unit.

 

The E. coli ribosome is firstly divided into two large subunits, the 30S and 50S. The 30S is comprised of a smaller 16S rRNA and 21 proteins, numbered from S1 to S21 (S is for smaller in this case, because they belong to the smaller subunit). The 50S subunit contains two rRNA molecules, a 5S and a 23S, and 34 proteins, numbered from L1 to L34.

 

Given that the whole E. coli ribosome is 80S, that image comprises a little over a quarter of the ribosome.

[budullewraagh]

that's actually disturbing

[ydoaPs]

thats a big diagram

[budullewraagh]

indeed

[zhuam]

Hello there,

 

I think it will be hard if you try to find the composition of ribosome on the net. If you are really interested, I think you should go to any university library and look for protein production in vivo.

I read some books about protein production and it is pretty interesting. As mentioned before, the ribosome consists of two units the 30S and 50S. The S is a centrifugation coefficient or something like that.

Then, each of the units has many sites. I do not recall exactly, but they name it A, B, C, D or something like that.

When a protein is produced, each of these sites bind to the sequence of aminoacids that is going to be elongated and provide the "right" environment so that the elongation proccess is thermodynamically stable and viable.

That is how more or less the ribosome is divided. If you want specifics, I would definitely recommend you to go to a biomedical library.