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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Feb 1.
Published in final edited form as: Trends Biochem Sci. 2018 Nov 22;44(2):95–109. doi: 10.1016/j.tibs.2018.10.009

Figure 3. Ribosome specialization.

Figure 3.

If populations of ribosomes exhibit distinct phenotypes there are multiple ways in which these functional differences could exist. A) Distinct ribosome subpopulations could have a range of specificities for their mRNAs. These could be from the individual mRNA level to global translation regulation. B) The timescale at which changes to RP stoichiometry or PTMs could exert effects on translation can potentially range from the extremely rapid/seconds (especially in the case of PTMs), to the very long term e.g. years. C) mRNA expression is noisy and buffered at the level of translation. D) The elongation rate of a ribosome represents a tradeoff between speed and accuracy. Further the elongation rate is not constant on a given mRNA with some sections of an mRNA being translated more rapidly than others.