Regulation of Translation

Like any factory, the machinery of translation can work at varying rates. Variation in the rate of translation is useful for controlling the amount of an active protein in a cell. Some externally applied chemicals, such as some antibiotics, can stop translation. Conversely, the presence of more than one ribosome on an mRNA can speed up protein synthesis. Some antibiotics and bacterial toxins work by inhibiting translation

Antibiotics are defensive molecules produced by microorganisms such as certain bacteria and fungi. These substances often destroy other microbes, which might compete with the defenders for nutrients. Since the 1940s, scientists have isolated increasing numbers of antibiotics, and physicians use them to treat a great variety of infectious diseases, ranging from bacterial meningitis to pneumonia to gonorrhea. The key to the medical use of antibiotics is specificity: An antibiotic must act to destroy the microbial invader, but not harm the human host. One way in which antibacterial antibiotics achieve this is to block the synthesis of the bacterial cell wall — something that is essential to the microbe but is not part of human biochemistry. Penicillin works in this way. Another way in which antibiotics work is to inhibit all bacterial protein synthesis. Recall that the prokaryotic ribosome is smaller, and has a different collection of proteins, than the eukaryotic ribosome. Some antibiotics bind only to bacterial ribosomal proteins that are important in protein synthesis. Without the ability to make proteins, the bacterial invaders die, and the infection is stemmed. Some bacteria affect their human hosts through mechanisms similar to those we use against them. Diphtheria is an infectious disease of childhood and before the advent of effective vaccines, it was a major cause of childhood death. The infective agent, the bacterium Cornybacterium diphtheriae, produces a highly lethal toxin that modifies and inactivates a protein that is essential for the movement of mRNA and ribosomes during eukaryotic protein synthesis.

Polysome formation increases the rate of protein synthesis

Several ribosomes can work simultaneously at translating a single mRNA molecule, producing multiple molecules of the protein at the same time. As soon as the first ribosome has moved far enough from the initiation point, a second initiation complex can form, then a third, and so on. An assemblage consisting of a thread of mRNA with its beadlike ribosomes and their growing polypeptide chains is called a polyribosome, or polysome. Cells that are actively synthesizing proteins contain large numbers of polysomes and few free ribosomes or ribosomal subunits. A polysome is like a cafeteria line, in which patrons follow one another, adding items to their trays. At any moment, the person at the start has a little food (a newly initiated protein); the person at the end has a complete meal (a completed protein). However, in the polysome cafeteria, everyone gets the same meal: Many copies of the same protein are made from a single mRNA. While protein synthesis can be inhibited with antibiotics and speeded up via polysomes, these are not the only ways in which the amount of an active protein in a cell can be controlled. After the protein is synthesized, it may undergo changes that alter its function.