The mechanics of ribosomal translocation

Abstract The ribosome translates the sequence of codons of an mRNA into the corresponding sequence of amino acids as it moves along the mRNA with a codon-step width of about 10 A. The movement of the million-dalton complex ribosome is triggered by the universal elongation factor G (EF2 in archaea and eukaryotes) and is termed translocation. Unraveling the molecular details of translocation is one of the most challenging tasks of current ribosome research. In the last two years, enormous progress has been obtained by highly-resolved X-ray and cryo-electron microscopic structures as well as by sophisticated biochemical approaches concerning the trigger and control of the movement of the tRNA 2 ·mRNA complex inside the ribosome during translocation. This review inspects and surveys these achievements.