Arrest Peptides as Force Sensors to Study Co-translational Membrane Protein Biogenesis

Certain arrest peptides, those from the SecM protein in particular, appear to sense the tension in the nascent chain at the point when the ribosome reaches the penultimate codon in the peptide. Such arrest peptides can be transplanted into other proteins to serve as force sensors that give us a new tool to study co-translational events involving the nascent chain.