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Cover Picture: Ligand‐Dependent Upregulation of Ribosomal Shunting (ChemBioChem 13/2013)
Author(s) -
Ogawa Atsushi
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
chembiochem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.05
H-Index - 126
eISSN - 1439-7633
pISSN - 1439-4227
DOI - 10.1002/cbic.201390046
Subject(s) - eukaryotic small ribosomal subunit , ligand (biochemistry) , protein subunit , open reading frame , ribosomal protein , chemistry , ribosomal rna , microbiology and biotechnology , messenger rna , gene , biology , computational biology , ribosome , translation (biology) , biochemistry , rna , receptor , peptide sequence
The cover picture shows a new type of eukaryotic upregulating riboswitch (ON‐eRS), engineered by A. Ogawa (see p. 1539 ff. ), that activates “ribosomal shunting” in response to a specific ligand. A 40S ribosomal subunit (a green train) that has finished translation at one open reading frame usually looks for the next downstream ORF (dORF, a yellow flag) on mRNA (a black bold line), but some obstacles such as a rigid stem and/or mimic genes (gray rocks on mRNA) prevent the 40S from proceeding (OFF state, left). In contrast, in the presence of a ligand (a round character, ligand‐kun) that properly binds to the mRNA, the 40S can shunt over the obstacles to reach the dORF through a bypass formed by the ligand–mRNA interaction (ON state, right). This hybridization switch‐free riboswitch has a great advantage in that it saves energy for the regulation of gene expression. The background shows tram rails in Matsuyama, Japan.