Uploaded October 2009 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
I've tangled with the amazing ribosome structure published by the Steitz lab (large subunit 1ffk.pdb), and the Yonath and Ramakrishnan labs (small subunit, 1fja.pdb and 1fjg.pdb respectively) since the first edition of our textbook in 2000. Since that time, and all atoms model generated with other hybrid techniques has been published. In honor of the nobel effort, I'm posting a handful of simple rotation movies that show the basic anatomy of the whole ribosome. Here we see the large subunit generated from the original Steitz data 1ffk and other models as an all atoms model 1twv sitting on top of the small subunit, 1twt. The Large 50s subunit consisting of the 23s (dark red) and 5s (bright red) RNAs along with the associated ribosomal proteins (dark purple), lifts upwards on the second rotation to reveal the complementary face of the 30s subunit which in this file contains the 16s RNA (pink), the associated proteins, two tRNAs (orange) bound to a bright yellow mRNA which is buried too deep in the active site to see since its only 2 bases long. (Actually, the large subunit fades in on the second rotation... I thought I could make Youtube loop this infinitely, but can't figure out how.)
I've tangled with the amazing ribosome structure published by the Steitz lab (large subunit 1ffk.pdb), and the Yonath and Ramakrishnan labs (small subunit, 1fja.pdb and 1fjg.pdb respectively) since the first edition of our textbook in 2000. Since that time, and all atoms model generated with other hybrid techniques has been published. In honor of the nobel effort, I'm posting a handful of simple rotation movies that show the basic anatomy of the whole ribosome. Here we see the large subunit generated from the original Steitz data 1ffk and other models as an all atoms model 1twv sitting on top of the small subunit, 1twt. The Large 50s subunit consisting of the 23s (dark red) and 5s (bright red) RNAs along with the associated ribosomal proteins (dark purple), lifts upwards on the second rotation to reveal the complementary face of the 30s subunit which in this file contains the 16s RNA (pink), the associated proteins, two tRNAs (orange) bound to a bright yellow mRNA which is buried too deep in the active site to see since its only 2 bases long. (Actually, the large subunit fades in on the second rotation... I thought I could make Youtube loop this infinitely, but can't figure out how.)
