Scientists Probe Role of Nucleus in Protein Synthesis

EXPORT MECHANISM: The tRNA must mature inside the nucleus before export. tRNAs are aminoacylated, and only tRNAs charged with an amino acid are exported efficiently. Export occurs when the tRNA is carried through the nuclear pore by a complex of exportin-t and Ran-GTP. As the project to sequence the human genome moves relentlessly ahead, molecular biologists are hard at work posing the next important questions about protein synthesis. Soon scientists will know every single gene and every RNA,

Written byHarvey Black

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EXPORT MECHANISM: The tRNA must mature inside the nucleus before export. tRNAs are aminoacylated, and only tRNAs charged with an amino acid are exported efficiently. Export occurs when the tRNA is carried through the nuclear pore by a complex of exportin-t and Ran-GTP.

As the project to sequence the human genome moves relentlessly ahead, molecular biologists are hard at work posing the next important questions about protein synthesis.

Soon scientists will know every single gene and every RNA, notes Anita Hopper, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, Pa. "But then [learning] how this is used within the architecture of the cell--the cytosol and the nucleus--is much more difficult," she says. Questions being explored include how the RNAs get out of the nucleus and how they get to the ribosomes, organelles in the cytoplasm where the proteins are actually assembled. Many ...

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