# Making proteins: translation

> A ribosome reads an mRNA three letters at a time and joins amino acids in that order. The chain folds into a protein whose shape is its job.

Source: https://khushisingh.in/explore/05-making-proteins/
Author: Khushi Singh (khushisingh.in). Licence: CC BY 4.0 for text and original illustrations, unless a credit says otherwise.
Evidence labels used on this site: established, strong evidence, emerging, hypothesis, debated. Where a page has Simple, Curious and Expert versions, all three follow.

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[Biology made simple](https://khushisingh.in/explore/) · How genes work · 5 of 8

About 2 minutes

The code is read in three-letter words, **codons**; 64 of them spell 20 amino acids plus start and stop, and nearly all life uses the same code (Nirenberg & Matthaei 1961). The **ribosome** starts at AUG; adaptor **tRNAs** bring the amino acid that matches each codon, and the chain grows by a few amino acids every second (Ingolia et al. 2011). (evidence: established)

The finished chain folds into a precise shape, and the shape is its job. Misfolded proteins are destroyed, and worn-out parts of the cell are recycled by autophagy. Because bacterial ribosomes differ slightly from ours, many antibiotics work by jamming them (Wilson 2014).

*[Here the web page has an interactive activity; open the source URL to use it.]*

**In my research:** [Protein folding, the ER and autophagy →](https://khushisingh.in/research/er-and-autophagy/)

## Sources

1. Nirenberg MW, Matthaei JH (1961) The dependence of cell-free protein synthesis in E. coli upon naturally occurring or synthetic polyribonucleotides. PNAS 47:1588–1602. [doi:10.1073/pnas.47.10.1588](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.47.10.1588)
2. Ingolia NT, Lareau LF, Weissman JS (2011) Ribosome profiling of mouse embryonic stem cells reveals the complexity and dynamics of mammalian proteomes. Cell 147:789–802. [doi:10.1016/j.cell.2011.10.002](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2011.10.002)
3. Wilson DN (2014) Ribosome-targeting antibiotics and mechanisms of bacterial resistance. Nature Reviews Microbiology 12:35–48. [doi:10.1038/nrmicro3155](https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3155)