Figure 1.

Discontinuous translation coordinates cotranslational folding of the nascent peptide chain. The codon translation velocity is mainly determined by the concentration of the cognate tRNA; thus, the codon sequence shapes a unique translation profile for each transcript (discontinuous line at the bottom). Clusters of codons pairing to low-abundance tRNAs (red; minima in the profile) slow the ribosome, whereas codon stretches decoded by high-abundance tRNAs (green) allow the ribosome to proceed with relatively fast speed. The local minima kinetically coordinate the sequential folding of single domains (domain 1, blue; domain 2, orange) in multidomain proteins.