Protein Synthesis Lab Report

975 Words2 Pages

Ash Kothare
Professor Hanke
Honors Biology
19 September 2015
Paper 5
The paper, Function of Aggregated Reticulocyte Ribosomes in Protein Synthesis by A. Gierer, details the findings about a study to answer the question whether multiple ribosomes can operate on one molecule of messenger RNA simultaneously. Firstly, background information is necessary for understanding this paper. Ribosomes, the organelle where protein synthesis occurs, require a messenger RNA to be attached to it to be labelled active. Active ribosomes have an increased molecular weight due to the mRNA which in turn causes a higher sedimentation coefficient. The value of the sedimentation coefficient is calculated by timing the movement of a particle in a medium of known viscosity. …show more content…

A couple other techniques used were incubation, titration, sucrose gradient and measurement of radioactivity. Incubation was necessary to add the RNase to the cell so it would disintegrate into ribosomal units. Titration is the addition of one solution of a known molarity to a known volume of another solution of unknown concentration until the reaction reaches neutralization. Here the supernatant solution was titrated to a pH of 7.5. The purpose behind centrifuging the cell is to isolate the ribosomal particles from the cell lysates. The ribosomes are named by the sedimentation characteristics during centrifugation. The sedimentation properties of a particle depend on its molecular size and geometrical shape. Sucrose gradient centrifugation also known as isopycnic centrifugation, particles of a specific density sediment until they reach the point where their density is the same as the gradient media in this case the sucrose. The particles are then separated according to their …show more content…

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