Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Mar 26.
Published in final edited form as: Chem Rev. 2014 Jan 9;114(6):3266–3280. doi: 10.1021/cr400313x

Figure 6. Translation of a hairpin.

Figure 6

a. A hairpin mRNA is held between two beads. As the ribosomes translates the hairpin the end-to-end distance increases. b. A trajectory of the end-to-end distance (extension) as a function of time at constant force applied to the ends of the mRNA. Discrete steps are seen corresponding to translocation at each codon. c. A histogram of the pairwise distribution of points on the trajectory; the distance between every two points is plotted. The maxima in multiples of 2.7 nm indicate that the step sizes are all equal, and correspond to translocation of the three nucleotides—one codon. The figure contains parts of Figure 1 and 2 from Reference 5. (Adapted with permission from ref. 5. Copyright 2008 Nature Publishing Group)