As my daughter and I studied biology, we wondered how on earth a prokaryote cell can assemble a protein at a mind-boggling 20 amino acids per second. We wondered what the rate limiting step was.
This paper discusses a mathematical model to prove that the rate-limiting factor when a ribosome is assembling a protein is the time it takes for a near-match amino acid to get shouldered out of the way by a correct-match amino acid in the chemical shuffle of building blocks arriving at the protein assembly site.
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=cbmeviljoen
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