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Single-Molecule Optical Tweezers Studies of Translation

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Book cover Biophysics of RNA-Protein Interactions

Part of the book series: Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering ((BIOMEDICAL))

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Abstract

Translation, the process of ribosome-mediated protein synthesis, is a key step for gene expression regulation. Single-molecule optical tweezers technique has had great success in biophysical characterization of many important molecular interactions, but its application to the translation process remained challenging until recently. The past decade witnessed fast progress of the successful application of optical tweezers technique to various aspects of the translation process, including mRNA structure disruption during translation initiation, the peptide chain elongation kinetics, and the interactions between ribosome and nascent polypeptide. In this chapter, we will give a brief introduction of the single-molecule optical tweezers technique and a comprehensive overview of its application in translation.

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Abbreviations

AFM:

Atomic force microscopy

bp:

Base pair

CI:

Confidence interval

mRNA:

Messenger RNA

ms:

Millisecond

nm:

Nanometer

nt:

Nucleotide

pN:

picoNewton

SD:

Shine-Dalgarno sequence

s.d.:

Standard deviation

UTR:

Untranslated region

WLC:

Worm-like chain model

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Acknowledgements

X. Qu was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01GM121847 and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) Functional Genomics Initiative. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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  1. Molecular Biology Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, 10065, USA

    Xiaohui Qu

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  1. Kavli Institute of NanoScience, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Chirlmin Joo

  2. Department of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK

    David Rueda

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Qu, X. (2019). Single-Molecule Optical Tweezers Studies of Translation. In: Joo, C., Rueda, D. (eds) Biophysics of RNA-Protein Interactions. Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9726-8_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9726-8_7

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