Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Mol Syst Biol. 2011 Apr 12;7:481. doi: 10.1038/msb.2011.14.
Proper functioning of biological cells requires that the process of protein expression be carried out with high efficiency and fidelity. Given an amino-acid sequence of a protein, multiple degrees of freedom still remain that may allow evolution to tune efficiency and fidelity for each gene under various conditions and cell types. Particularly, the redundancy of the genetic code allows the choice between alternative codons for the same amino acid, which, although 'synonymous,' may exert dramatic effects on the process of translation. Here we review modern developments in genomics and systems biology that have revolutionized our understanding of the multiple means by which translation is regulated. We suggest new means to model the process of translation in a richer framework that will incorporate information about gene sequences, the tRNA pool of the organism and the thermodynamic stability of the mRNA transcripts. A practical demonstration of a better understanding of the process would be a more accurate prediction of the proteome, given the transcriptome at a diversity of biological conditions.
生物细胞的正常运作要求蛋白质表达过程具有高效率和高保真度。给定蛋白质的氨基酸序列，仍然存在多个自由度，这可能使进化能够根据不同的条件和细胞类型来调整每个基因的效率和保真度。特别是，遗传密码的冗余性允许在同一个氨基酸的替代密码子之间进行选择，尽管这些密码子是“同义的”，但它们可能会对翻译过程产生巨大影响。在这里，我们回顾了基因组学和系统生物学的现代发展，这些发展彻底改变了我们对翻译调控的多种方式的理解。我们提出了新的方法来在更丰富的框架中对翻译过程进行建模，该框架将包含有关基因序列、生物体的 tRNA 池和 mRNA 转录本热力学稳定性的信息。在多种生物条件下，给定转录组，更准确地预测蛋白质组，将是对该过程更好理解的实际证明。
