from the natural-molecular-manufacturing dept.
William Morgan writes "Just a reminder that there is more than one path…
A press release on EurekAlert describes an article in Science about researchers at UC Santa Cruz who used x-ray crystallography to detail the structure of ribosomes."
In a paper published in the 30 March 2001 issue of Science, the researchers describe the structure of a bacterial ribosome in sufficient detail to begin to understand how it works. "This allows us to see what all the key parts are and how they interact," said Harry Noller, head of the group that obtained the new images. "The ribosome is a molecular machine, and it must have moving parts to accomplish its function. We are now in a position to understand the structural rearrangements of the ribosome during protein synthesis," Noller said. The abstract of the paper is freely available online.
Previous research into the fine structure of ribosomes was covered here in July and August of 2000.
