Trajectories of the ribosome as a Brownian nanomachine.

ABSTRACT: A Brownian machine, a tiny device buffeted by the random motions of molecules in the environment, is capable of exploiting these thermal motions for many of the conformational changes in its work cycle. Such machines are now thought to be ubiquitous, with the ribosome, a molecular machine responsible for protein synthesis, increasingly regarded as prototypical. Here we present a new analytical approach capable of determining the free-energy landscape and the continuous trajectories of molecular machines from a large number of snapshots obtained by cryogenic electron microscopy. We demonstrate this approach in the context of experimental cryogenic electron microscope images of a large ensemble of nontranslating ribosomes purified from yeast cells. The free-energy landscape is seen to contai

SUBMITTER: Dashti A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4267381 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature