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The irreducibly complex ribosome is a unique creation in the three domains of life by Matyas Cserhati and Warren Shipton The evolution of the genetic code and the ribosome are intimately connected as the code is expressed through ribosomal activity. Models of genetic code evolution are analyzed. The error-minimization theory is faulty in that it supposes that highly error-prone genetic codes could produce more precise codes over time. The stereochemical theory posits complementarity between nucleotides and amino acids, but cannot demonstrate this for the whole code. The co-evolution theory states that the genetic code developed from an ancestral through an...

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have imaged the atom-by-atom structure of the ribosome attached to a molecule that controls its motion for the first time, providing a step forward for the development of better antibiotics.The above image may look like a tangle of squiggly lines, but youÂ’re actually looking at a molecular machine called a ribosome. Its job is to translate DNA sequences into proteins, the workhorse compounds that sustain you and all living things.The image is also a milestone. ItÂ’s the first time the atom-by-atom structure of the ribosome has been seen as itÂ’s attached to a...

Three researchers share the prize for revealing the workings of the cell's protein-making machine.Three molecular biologists who mapped the structure and inner workings of the ribosome — the cell's machinery for churning out proteins from the genetic code — have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who works at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK; Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and Thomas Steitz at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, share the prize equally. "I'm in a bit of shock at the moment," Ramakrishnan told Nature shortly...

Cell Motors Play Together Feb 27, 2009— If one molecular machine by itself is a wonder, what would you think of groups of them playing in concert?  Recent papers and news articles are claiming that’s what happens in living cells: molecular motors coordinate their efforts...