Abstract
Protein homeostasis of bacterial cells is maintained by coordinated processes of protein production, folding, and degradation. Translational efficiency of a given mRNA depends on how often the ribosomes initiate synthesis of a new polypeptide and how quickly they read the coding sequence to produce a full-length protein. The pace of ribosomes along the mRNA is not uniform: periods of rapid synthesis are separated by pauses. Here, we summarize recent evidence on how ribosome pausing affects translational efficiency and protein folding. We discuss the factors that slow down translation elongation and affect the quality of the newly synthesized protein. Ribosome pausing emerges as important factor contributing to the regulatory programs that ensure the quality of the proteome and integrate the cellular and environmental cues into regulatory circuits of the cell.
Highlights
TRANSLATION REGULATION IN BACTERIATranslation is an essential step in the expression of protein-coding genes, which defines the composition of the cellular proteome
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Microbial Physiology and Metabolism, a section of the journal Frontiers in Microbiology
Even under constant environmental conditions, some mRNAs are translated more often than others, resulting in a characteristic copy number of proteins synthesized from their respective mRNA, which is defined as translational efficiency (TE)
Summary
Translation is an essential step in the expression of protein-coding genes, which defines the composition of the cellular proteome. Translation is the most conserved and energy-demanding process in the cell, which consumes two-thirds of the total cellular energy during rapid growth (Russell and Cook, 1995; Klumpp et al, 2013; Basan et al, 2015). Translational control ensures rapid response to changes in environmental cues, which is followed by global changes in cell physiology, including adjustments in transcriptional profiles, alterations in ribosome biogenesis, and switching to ribosome hibernation programs. The initiation step, at which the ribosome selects the mRNA and finds the open reading frame (ORF), to a large extent, controls the frequency at which a given mRNA is translated (Milon and Rodnina, 2012; Gualerzi and Pon, 2015; Tollerson and Ibba, 2020; Figure 1). The basal translation level is determined by the accessibility of the ribosome binding site on the mRNA, the nature of the start codon, the position of the Shine-Dalgarno (SD) sequence relative
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