English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

T initiation is a major rate-limiting step in protein synthesis and is highly regulated in all cells. Messenger RNAs (mRNAs) play a central role in directing this regulation. Through instructions that remain largely cryptic, mRNA transcripts modulate the initiation process to achieve a specific translation efficiency (TE), the amount of protein made from a given mRNA transcript. TE is precisely tuned, can vary significantly depending on cell type, varies by orders of magnitude across different transcripts, and thus constitutes an essential variable in gene expression. Understanding how mRNAs encode their own unique TEs is therefore a fundamental challenge in biology. Classic studies have shown that mRNAs can encode TE by folding into structures that facilitate or impede translation initiation. The mRNA-binding cleft of the ribosome can accommodate only single-stranded mRNA. Thus, translation initiation requires unfolding of any mRNA structures that overlap the start codon, imposing a structure-dependent energetic penalty on initiation (Figure 1). Synthetic biologists have harnessed these principles to tune the TEs of designed mRNAs over a large dynamic range.

Messenger RNA Structure Regulates Translation Initiation: A Mechanism Exploited from Bacteria to Humans