Building Ribosomes from Computational LEGO

Earnest, Tyler

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/89888 Copy

Description

Title

Building Ribosomes from Computational LEGO

Author(s)

Earnest, Tyler

Issue Date

2016-04

Keyword(s)

Physics

Abstract

Ribosomes, the molecular machines responsible for assembling protein from amino acids, are among the most fundamental structures in biology and are found across all domains of life. These machines are assembled hierarchically by the association of 54 proteins to three strands of RNA (in bacteria) in a highly coordinated sequence. My research involves the construction of a lattice based, computational model of Escherichia coli to study the in vivo assembly of the ribosomal small subunit. Explicit in this model is the transcription and translation of the ribosomal components. The central cell in this figure is a visualization of a single time point in the simulation. The cubes show how the simulation domain is discretized onto a lattice. The spheres represent the ribosomal protein (gray), small (yellow) and large (brown) subunits, completed ribosomes (white), and assembling ribosomes (orange). Inside the cell is a representation of the bacterial chromosome from which the ribosomal constituents are transcribed. This structure is from a separate project of mine which aims to provide accurate gene positioning for my whole cell simulations. These projects lay the groundwork for more complete models of living cells.

Type of Resource

• text
• image

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/89888

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2016 Tyler Earnest

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